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New AI Blog Page

2010-07-20T02:14:00.001-07:00

The Accountability Initiative Blog has moved!

For the latest updates on accountability news and views across the country, log on to our new blog page at:

http://www.accountabilityindia.in/blog

AI in the News: Who's Watching the Watchers

2010-07-10T02:13:00.000-07:00

The NGO landscape in India is getting pretty crowded. According to the findings of a recent government survey there are an estimated 3.3 million registered NGOs working in the country — one for every 400 Indians. But with the growing influence of NGOs in India today, many have raised questions about their transparency and accountability. Mandakini Devasher, Accountability Initiative discusses how the Right to Information (RTI) could offer a possible solution. Click here to read the article in the Indian Express.

India and the Failed States Index: 12 Counts of Failure

2010-07-06T04:40:00.000-07:00

Rishiv Khattar

Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace have been publishing the Failed States Index since 2005. The 2010 Index uses 90,000 publicly available sources to assess 177 countries and rate them on 12 metrics of state decay—India ranked 87 and received a score of 77.8.

Higher scores on a metric indicate a greater degree of failure. The scores used are from the Fund for Peace publication as there appears to be some inconsistency in the Foreign Policy publication’s score.

No.	Metric	India’s score
1	Mounting demographic pressures	8.3
2	Massive movement of refugees or internally displaced persons, creating complex humanitarian emergencies	4.9
3	Legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance or group paranoia	7.3
4	Chronic and sustained human flight	6.7
5	Uneven economic development across group lines	8.9
6	Sharp and/ or severe economic decline	5.0
7	Criminalization and/ or delegitimization of the State	5.5
8	Progressive deterioration of public services	7.0
9	Suspension or arbitrary application of the rule of law and widespread violation of human rights	6.0
10	Security apparatus operates as a “State within a State”	7.1
11	Rise of factionalized elites	6.0
12	Intervention of other states or external political actors	5.1
	Total	77.8

While the most recent analysis of the scores is not yet available, past assessments by the organizations and recent news are useful in deciphering the factors that may have contributed to these scores.

1) The score on the demographic pressure metric is due to high population density relative to food supply and other essential resources in the country, and pressures from skewed population growth that have led to a “youth bulge”.

2) India does not have a major refugee or IDP problem but does have a manageable influx of refugees from Tibet, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

3) Group grievance scores are high primarily in Kashmir, as a result of the rise of militant groups, communal violence, and tensions between India and Pakistan. An increasingly violent Maoist insurgency and the rise of Naxalism have also exacerbated grievances.

4) Human flight indicators remain high for India as a significant percentage of the country’s educated population leave to study or find jobs elsewhere.

(5) and (6) The Indian economy has rapidly developed and established itself as the world’s second-fastest growing economy. India’s recently updated foreign direct investment policy (2005) has helped further open markets. And India’s significant economic growth (GDP increased by 6.8 % in 2009 despite a global recession) has been inequitable, as a large section of the population lives in poverty.

7) Politicians running campaigns and being elected to office while on trial for criminal charges have undermined state legitimacy. While Indian law prohibits convicted criminals from holding office, nothing prevents them from doing so until they have been convicted. Apart from the growth of crime syndicates linked to government officials, there is endemic corruption and widespread resistance to accountability and transparency—something the recently passed Right to Information Act may improve.

The FfP’s most recent assessment of India’s core state institutions:

8) The quality of public services is severely lacking, especially in rural areas. Nonetheless, government efforts to improve health and education services (such as through the NRHM) have contributed to an improving score on this metric. Significant efforts this year—the Right to Food Act and the Right to Education—may further help.

9) India has a decent human rights record, having recently made concrete steps toward expanding the rights of women and LGBT populations. However, the state is sometimes accused of preventing human rights organizations from entering Kashmir.

10) The rise of militant groups as well as the power wielded by Kangaroo courts and unofficial governing bodies in rural areas impact performance on this metric. Populations often turn to these bodies to address their grievances due to social custom or a lack of confidence in elected officials.

11) Communal, caste and regional tensions are sometimes reflected in government which has led to the factionalization of elites, but this is often mitigated by India’s functioning democracy.

The quality of public services is a metric that India consistently performs poorly on. Whereas demographic pressures fluctuate with factors like natural disasters that lead to a massive loss of life, the progressive deterioration of public services can perhaps more effectively be tackled through systemic reforms and improved accountability. It’s important to note that India’s score of 7.0 on this metric puts it behind countries like Ghana, Kazakhstan, Namibia that it is more developed than in other categories.

The writer is an intern at the Accountability Initiative.

From Outlays to Outcomes- Getting Development from Development Expenditures

2010-07-06T04:33:00.000-07:00

In August 2009, AI and the Centre for Development Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research organised a conference entitled “From Outlays to Outcomes - Getting Development from Development Expenditures” in New Delhi. The papers presented at the conference have been featured in a special issue of India Review (Volume 9 Issue 2 2010). These include a section of guest editor papers, a number of papers discussing accountability in public expenditures in India, and a review essay on decentralization, institutions and accountability.

Health Care Spending Rising Faster Than Economic Growth In Industrialized Countries – OECD Health Data 2010

2010-07-01T02:30:00.000-07:00

While India is still struggling to live up to the “Nine is Mine” dream (calling for 9% of GDP to be committed to health and education), according to OECD’s Health Data 2010, in leading industrialized countries, the health care spending is rising faster than economic growth. The study reports:

Average health spending in the 31 member OECD counties has increased from 7.8 percent of GDP in 2000 to 9.0 percent in 2008 –averaging around 8.4% of the GDP.
During the same period, health spending per person increased by 4.2% a year on average.
Governments of most OECD countries shoulder most of the burden of healthcare costs. Public expenditure has increased from an average of 12% of total government spending in 1990 to a record 16% in 2008.
United States tops the list, spending 7,538 dollars per person on health care in 2008, more than double the average 3,000 dollars for all OECD countries.

UID: Thoughts from an Erstwhile Skeptic

2010-06-28T04:25:00.000-07:00

Avani Kapur

Last month I attended a Consultation Workshop on the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), now called AADHAR. With the first UID numbers being issued between August 2010 and February 2011, this was a part of UIDAI’s campaign to hold a wide range of consultations with Civil Society Organizations in various parts of the country.

For those of us, who are curious about the UID, and recognize the potential benefits it can have (can being the operative word here) but yet have our reservations, the workshop was definitely enlightening. One of the main things that came out from the consultation was the amount of confusion that still exists about what exactly the UID can and cannot do and how much of an invasion of privacy it actually is.

I thought it would thus be useful to lay out some facts regarding the UID.

Fact 1: The UID itself will collect only standard attributes such as name, date of birth, gender, father/mother/spouse/guardians name, address and a photograph. The only unique information is the biometrics (10 fingerprints and both iris scans).

Fact 2 : The UID will be given to all residents who are in India and avail services and not just citizens.

Fact 3: The information in the database will be used only for authentication purposes and will not be shared or transmitted. Anyone seeking to authenticate the identity of another person using the UID database – will only get a response in YES or NO.

Fact 4: The UIDAI is working on a partnership model with a variety of agencies and service providers ( both government and private sector) to enroll residents for UID Numbers and verify their identity. For e.g. Insurance companies, LPG marketing companies, RSBY, MG-NREGA etc. The UIDAI will also engage with Outreach Groups (essentially CSOs) to target, the homeless, urban poor, tribals, differently-abled population of the country etc.

Fact 5: The UID database will be guarded both physically and electronically by a few select individuals with high clearance. It will not be available even for many members of the UID staff and will be secured through encryption, and in a highly secure data vault.

Sounds good so far? The obvious question then is that if these ideas are indeed so good then why are people so skeptical and in some cases even taking an extreme position of completely rejecting the UIDAI. I think the answer is nuanced and symptomatic to deeper issues.

Broadly there are 4 main concerns regarding the UID, namely, concerns over exclusion, individual privacy, and misuse of data and finally whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Let’s deal with them one by one.

Exclusion
While the UID team keeps stressing that the UID is voluntary but the fact of the matter is, for all practical purposes, in time, it will become mandatory as service providers may require a person to have a UID to access services. The concern then is, what will happen to those who are unable or purposely unallowed to get the UID.

The case of exclusion is definitely a concern – but not limited to the UID alone. Instead, the UID for its part has tried to mitigate against this by having an introducer system and getting ngos to assist in the enrolment process. Now it is the job of all the enrolling agencies to make sure that everyone has access to it and for us, civil society to assist in the process.

Individual Privacy and Misuse of Data
The UID itself only collects standard attributes, but since the enrolling system is through partnership with existing agencies such as LIC, banks, PDS shops, nrega job cards etc - the full board of the UIDAI may have additional data fields related to identity. The fear being , this kind of information could compromise privacy of the people, and leave it open for misuse—racial profiling being an obvious threat.

This is a legitimate fear, but blaming the UID itself for this, is not.

On the one hand, the question of privacy in itself is a very “urban” concept. No one really talks about the fact that for NREGA, muster rolls, job cards and daily wages are a matter of public knowledge and are instead considered important components for accountability and transparency. Moreover, anyone not privileged enough to have a permanent address or identity proof will ascertain to the fact that finally having some sort of “identity” would alleviate the challenges of something as basic as getting children into school, getting a telephone connection or even a death certificate.

Second, a host of our personal information is already publically available and there are no guarantees that they are not prone to misuse. The Election Commission and Census already collect a lot of our personal information; the railways make the names and ages of passengers public each time we travel , not to mention online social interaction sites such as Facebook , Orkut and Twitter, which are often prone to hacking.

So even without the UID, what is urgently needed is a law protecting our privacy. Last week, the UPA government appointed a panel to create a blueprint for a new law guaranteeing a citizen’s right to privacy. Once in place, the law is meant to recognize the right to privacy of an individual as a fundamental right and have in place provisions against wrongful collection of and misuse of data. While it remains to be seen what shape the law will take, it has to be said, in a way the UID has finally made us think about this important issue.

Lastly, Expenditure
With crores of rupees being put into the operationalisation of UID – is it really worth it?

Lets be clear, the UID itself will not solve all of the world’s problems. However, what it does have the potential to do is to centralize and clean up the government databases – a huge step in itself. Anyone who has gone through government databases knows that often, it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack (for more details please see here)

And having authentic, clean, reliable data can be an important step in better delivering our services. Take for example the PDS. While the UID may not be able to solve the problem of people not being included in the BPL list and hence being excluded from the PDS system, it should be able to solve problems related to leakages (see post below) and the presence of a large number of fake ration cards – all of which are literally money down the drain.

Finally, let’s remember, like with most things, the UID model is only as good as its application!

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator, PAISA Project at the Accountability Initiative

Debate on the National Food Security Bill

2010-06-25T08:18:00.000-07:00

Gayatri Sahgal

An essential aspect of ensuring that benefits reach the desired beneficiaries includes the ability of beneficiaries to hold the power holders to account; to make them responsible for their behaviour and actions. In the context of the debate on right to food, the first draft bill formulated by the government, titled ‘The National Food Security Bill’, failed to comprehensively address such core concerns. Accountability issues were largely glossed over with only respite involving a commitment to ensure the monitoring of finances by the Gram Sabha, through the medium of social audits. Notwithstanding, the limited discussion on accountability the main provisions of the proposed Act were widely attacked by civil society groups and academicians. The strongest opposition has emerged from the Right to Food Campaign who expressed their displeasure by formulating an alternative draft proposal. This proposal, referred to as the ‘Food and Entitlement Act’, while calling for a need to consolidate and expand existing entitlements along with addressing the structural causes of food insecurity, also included a separate section exclusively dedicated to addressing issues of accountability. The draft proposed the need to empower the Gram Sabha with the powers to monitor the implementation of the act, as well offered a detailed outline of the structure of the grievance redressal to be established to address complaints related to the violation of the provision the act. With the debate on the right to food stirring up again it seems prudent to take stock of how the accountability debate has been structured thus far.

Click here to view a table comparing the accountability provisions in the 'National Food Security Bill' and the 'Food and Entitlement Act'.

Potential Concerns with the Proposed Food Security Bill

2010-06-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

Yamini Aiyar and Gayatri Sahgal

On Friday, relevant ministries in the Government of India and the National Advisory council are going to start a round of negotiations to finalize the much awaited food security bill. The key issue up for debate is the question of universalization of the entitlement. The initial draft bill restricted the entitlement to the country’s poorest. The current negotiations are an effort to push for universal coverage as well as for a wider grain basket. The second and perhaps more critical issue for debate is the steps that need to be considered to deal with the widespread corruption and leakage in the current Public Distribution system. The new draft bill prepared by the planning commission has proposed that the disbursement process be linked to the UID which could deal help with the elimination of bogus cards ( to give a sense of the scale of the problem- since 2006, 5,300,000 bogus ration cards had been identified in West Bengal. Andhra Pradesh wasn’t far behind at 1,046,000 and Orissa was amongst the lowest at 250,000!). Linking with the UID is one important way of dealing with the corruption menace. But, corruption and leakage in the PDS is not just about bogus cards. At every step of the delivery chain, the system is plagues with perverse incentives that make accountability and efficient delivery impossible. To give you a sense of the problem, the Accountability Initiatives’ Gayatri Sahgal analyses the different levels of corruption in the PDS system. If the new bill is to ensure that entitlements reach the poorest, problems at every level of the system need to be addressed. This requires the political will to address systemic failures and undertake radical administrative reforms. Let's hope the new bill provides for that!
Diversion and Leakages in the PDS System
Key Facts
There are significant leakages in the functioning of the PDS system. Only about 42% of subsidized grains issued from the Central Pool reach the target group. Over 36% of the budgetary subsidies on food is siphoned off the supply chain and another 21% reaches the APL households. (Performance Evaluation of Targeted Public Distribution System Planning commission, 2005).
Data regarding the leakages in terms of type of food grain revealed 36% diversion of wheat, 31% diversion of rice and 23% diversion of sugar. Diversion appears to be more of a feature of northern, eastern and north Eastern states (Saxena, 2009).
Share of food subsidy received by Below Poverty Line (BPL) families and Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) scheme has been decreasing. In FY 2008-09, BPL and AAY received 84% of total food subsidy released, down from 80 % in FY 2006-07 (Accountability Initiative, 2010).
Amongst the States, Bihar and Punjab have the highest rates of leakages; more than 75% of the grain allotted from the central pool fails to reach the intended beneficiaries. States such as AP, Kerala, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, record leakages below 25% and are considered to be low leakage states (Planning Commission, 2005).
At the level of the Fair Price Shops FPS, states such as Haryana, Bihar and Punjab record the highest levels of leakages (above 50%), while states such as HP, Assam, MP, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal record rates of leakages less than 10% (Planning Commission, 2005).
The FPSs are generally not viable because of low annual turnover and they remain in business through leakages and diversions of subsidised grains (Planning Commission, 2005).
Though the off-take per household has shown some improvement under TPDS, yet only about 57% of the BPL households are covered by the TPDS (Planning Commission, 2005).
The cost of income transfer to the poor through PDS is much higher than that through other modes. According to the study, for one rupee worth of income transfer to the poor, the GoI spends Rs 3.65, indicating that one rupee of budgetary consumer subsidy is worth only 27 paise to the poor (Saxena, 2009).
Leakages due to improper storage and transportation facilities are also significant. In FY 2008-09, Rs. 101 crore and Rs. 133 crore was lost due to poor storage and transportation respectively (Food Subsidy Budget Brief, Accountability Initiative, 2010).
Leakages in the form of ghost cards are also widely prevalent. In West Bengal, 53 lakh fake ration cards were cancelled from July 2006 till December 2009 (Accountability Initiative, 2010).

Click to view the Leakages and Diversions in the Public Distribution System.

The UPA-II Government's Unfulfilled Promises

2010-06-08T02:27:00.000-07:00

Yamini Aiyar, Director of the Accountability Initiative, assesses the performance of the UPA government.

(Click on the image to enlarge text.)

Grievance Redressal Mechanisms - The Ombudsman in Kerala

2010-06-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

Joshua Stark

An elderly man, standing beside his daughter, is yelling and waving his arms. “A tree is overhanging his property and polluting his pond” whispers my Malayalam translator. “He wants it removed, but the panchayat has done nothing”. The man pauses briefly before resuming his offensive. His embattled target is another elderly man, a retired high court judge – the Ombudsman of Kerala. He is here in the northern city of Kannur in Kerala for two days to hold sittings and hear grievances – though they are not all as colourful as this one.

The Ombudsman – literally, the people's protector – is originally a Swedish institution which has since been adopted widely across the world. At its core, the Ombudsman is an office which dedicates itself to receiving, investigating and resolving citizen's complaints against government. The intent is to create an independent and powerful check on government bodies – state bureaucracies, service providers, and other state institutions. To do this, the Swedish Ombudsman for instance most often issues simple requests to state institutions. The Swedish Ombudsman also has the power to act as a public prosecutor – he or she has the power to bring a case to the courts on behalf of those who submit complaints. However, this has rarely been necessary.

Other Ombudsmen have had a more turbulent relationship with the state. In the early 1990s, many Ombudsmen offices were created in Latin America. In many cases, simple requests were not enough to resolve grievances. Faced with indifference and occasionally outright hostility, the Latin American Ombudsmen more often used their “moral power” as public protectors of the people to force change. In Guatemala the Ombudsman denounced prominent politicians, and in Honduras the Ombudsman defended the right of the opposition to run for President. In some cases, the state responded with more hostility. Some Ombudsmen had their budgets slashed, or were simply replaced.

The Kerala Ombudsman represents a particularly Indian approach to the institution. It functions effectively like a court, albeit one where some rules of procedure are simplified. A citizen files a complaint and is given a date for a hearing at one of the Ombudsman's sittings around the state. Once both parties are present at the hearing, they present their cases. The Ombudsman can then resolve the case if there appears to be a solution. Or, if he believes more information is necessary, he may order an investigation. In the case above, he might order the Deputy Director of panchayats to produce a report containing photos and measurements of the offending tree along with copies of the relevant building or pollution codes. At the next available sitting – which might be one month away, or much longer – the report will be presented and the Ombudsman will make a further decision.

Many of the complaints submitted to the Ombudsman are more serious than some dead branches in a pond. At the hearings I attended I saw cases regarding access to drinking water, non-payment of wages, construction of public toilets, land encroachment, unlawful construction, false entry in muster rolls for NREGA works, the allocation of houses designated for the poor, pollution from various industries, and the behaviour of commissions under control of a panchayat.

Unfortunately the Kerala Ombudsman has not received the support it needs from the state government. Since 2001 the Ombudsman has requested funds for an independent investigative team, and the government has consistently ignored this and other requests. As it stands, the Ombudsman must rely on local officials – usually the Deputy Director of panchayats – for all investigations. Despite the usual apathy, the state government has not been overtly hostile to the Ombudsman. This may be due to one of the Kerala Ombudsman's unique features – it is only given purview over local self government institutions, rather than any government action whatsoever. The state government – which decides the Ombudsman's budget and effectively appoints him – is beyond the reach of the Ombudsman. While this means that corruption, incompetence and indifference at the state level is left untouched, perhaps it does enable the Ombudsman to effectively deal with complaints at the local level. While having an elderly man yell at him about a tree is bearable, it is not clear whether the Ombudsman could withstand such an assault from the Chief Minister.

Joshua Stark is an intern with Research Foundation for Governance in India, Ahmedabad. He has been researching grievance redressal mechanisms in India with a special focus on the institution of the Ombudsman.

CWG 2010 here we come...but at what cost?

2010-06-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

Mandakini Devasher Surie

Delhi is a city under siege! Over the last year, a silent army of civil engineers, urban planners, construction workers and contractorss have brought this to a standstill. Signs of the siege are everywhere – on uneven sidewalks and pavements which threaten to send pedestrians sprawling, on roads and flyovers where monstrous potholes threaten to swallow unsuspecting motorists and bring the city to a grinding halt. The mission? Make Delhi ready and able to host the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in October this year.

The games have been heavily criticised and not only because preparations for them have thrown everyday life in the city completely off kilter. Concerns have been raised about the ‘game worthiness’ of several venues, the hurried efforts to ‘beautify’ certain sections of the city, the efforts to ‘clear’ the city of slum dwellers, beggars and hawkers which in practice has meant the demolition slums across the city leaving thousands homeless. A recent report by the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) titled “The 2010 Commonwealth Games: Whose Wealth? Whose Commons?” puts a spotlight on some of these issues. Using the Right to Information Act 2005, HLRN accessed a copy of India’s Bid Document for the CWG games as well as information from different departments on the monies spent so far on the games. Their findings are staggering:

CWG Factoids

The bidding process from start to finish cost India Rs 137 crore. The Bid Document included an unprecedented offer by India to provide free luxury accommodation, travel and trips to participants, delegates, officials.
India made a last minute offer of $7.2 million or Rs 32.4 crore to train all Commonwealth Games athletes’ which apparently ensured India’s bid for the games.
The proposed expenditure on sports infrastructure for the games was pegged at Rs 150 crore in the Bid Document but a whopping sum of Rs 3390 crore has already been spent on building stadiums. That’s a shocking 2160% increase on the initial budget!
Official and unofficial estimates of the total cost of the games range from Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore;

The sheer volume of money being pumped into the CWG is unprecedented. To put things in perspective in this year’s Union Budget allocations for the CWG increased by a jaw dropping 6235% (from Rs 45.5 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 2,883 crore in 2009-10) (HLRN figures). Is this a case of misplaced priorities or are there really substantial gains to be had from hosting the games? In theory, the CWG games are supposed to put Delhi on the world map, bring in foreign investment, tourism and generate jobs, but international experience suggests that this is not always the case.

Several studies have shown that the economic benefits of mega-sporting events such as the Olympic Games or World Cup are hugely over-estimated. In a post-games scenario, many countries have struggled to earn back in revenues the huge amounts invested. For instance, American cities hosting the 1994 FIFA World Cup earned $ 4 billion in revenues from hosting the games but they collectively lost between $ 5.5 billion and $ 9.3 billion. Many countries are overwhelmed by debt – after barely pulling off the Olympic Games in 2004, Greece struggled to keep public debt down, the effects of which are being felt now. The costs continue to escalate for years after with countries having to find resources to manage and maintain games venues.

There are also questions about who really benefits from such events? South Africa has spent 3.5 billion pounds on preparations (1.72% of its GDP) to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup, but there are concerns that most of the facilities will really benefit tourists and the middle class rather than South Africa’s urban poor. Over and above the, investments in infrastructure mean budget cuts for other sectors. The Delhi Government has already announced that it will not have funds to undertake new projects in the forthcoming fiscal year. Moreover, according to the HLRN report funds marked for social sector expenditure have already been reallocated by the Delhi Government for the CWG. Couple this with the city wide drive against hawkers and beggars and it’s no wonder many have termed the CWG ‘anti-poor’ in its approach.

It is perhaps keeping of all of these factors in mind, that the Government of New Zealand recently refused to support the country’s bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games because at $600 million it was too expensive. If only, such prudence had prevailed in Delhi. Come October, Delhi will play host to athletes’ and tourists from countries across the Commonwealth. In true sarkari style, things will be completed in breakneck speed, we’ll put on a grand old show and maybe we’ll even win a medal or two. But let’s not kid ourselves; we’re in for some tough times ahead – fiscal and otherwise.

Mandakini D Surie is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.

Accountability Global News Scan

2010-06-01T02:25:00.000-07:00

A round up of accountability news and views from around the world.

USA: Obama Signs Law Supporting Global Press Freedom

President Obama signed the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act that will require the US government to draw attention to nations that tolerate or sanction press freedom violations.

China: US climate change envoy calls for more transparency

The US Special Envoy for Climate Change in Beijing called on nations to increase transparency to combat global warming, and raised prospects of China-US cooperation on the matter. China’s special representative said that countries attending the upcoming Cancun summit favour a legally binding climate accord by the end of 2011.

Thailand: Thailand extends censorship against anti-govt. protestors

After violent crackdowns on protestors seeking to topple Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the government continues to expand censorship by banning publications, thereby reducing both media and government transparency.

UK: The public has a right to know the truth

Secrecy in government is often a feeble excuse for inefficiency, argues Bruce Anderson in his assessment of the Tories’ commitment to transparency and the need for a more accountable government in the UK.

Africa: A new dawn in Africa

Economies are growing, émigrés returning and attitudes towards corruption are beginning to change, bringing hope for a more sustainable future in this transitioning continent.

Pakistan: Pakistani Citizens Demand their Right to Speak without “Fear of Threats”

After a series of government bans on websites such as Facebook and Youtube, free speech and human rights activists in Pakistan issue a statement to stand up for the Pakistani citizenry’s right to access information and peacefully voice their opinion.

Australia: Council’s move to change Right to Information laws “suspicious”

Recent moves by lawmakers in Brisbane raise suspicions that the cabinet is attempting to subvert Right to Information laws.

After the Tsunami: Malaysia’s Transformed Political Landscape in 2004 Continues to Test its Democracy

2010-05-28T00:26:00.000-07:00

The documentary Selapas Tsunami (After the Tsunami), assesses the sweeping political changes brought about by the results of the 12th General Election in Malaysia, and discusses the ramifications these changes have had on government accountability and the building of an inclusive democracy. The film raises powerful arguments for decentralization—the benefits of greater regulation at the local level, the friction between federal power and local control--and highlights the inevitable backlash from an old guard that is uncomfortable with the transparent new model of democracy.

If Only Khoslaji Had the RTI...........

2010-05-26T02:34:00.000-07:00

Abhishek

One of the most difficult things to get in Delhi is land for your house. Even more difficult is figuring out whether the land is legal or illegal, whether the land deal is genuine or if someone is tricking to trick you and make you a victim of a land fraud scam. Considering all the hassles, you might just choose to buy a flat, more so a flat which is built and allocated through the government, only to find out that there is no water in the taps, an electric current is running freely all over the place and the whole area just across the street is some kind of a hub for household industries and it just wont let you sleep. Even worse is that you open a shop on what you consider perfectly legal land only to discover after a few years that a huge crane is standing in front of your house, ready to tear apart the shop on the ‘now encroached’ land. For all of this and more, there is now a one pill cure for all the ailments in the form of the Right to Information Act.

A closer look at the RTI applications submitted to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) reflects the power of information to bring about a more transparent and accountable system of governance. The RTI also helps citizens to overcome bureaucratic hurdles and the associated corruption which have harassed the ‘common man’ for ages. Many of these applications are inquiries about a piece of land and its use, or a flat which a person is either currently using or plans to acquire in the future. There are some which are concerned with general queries about the maintenance of colonies, parks and the associated area in a particular locality. While these cater to the interests of an individual or a group of citizens, there are others which are relevant to the general public as a whole and question the DDA on planning, implementation and malfunctioning of public works. Besides this, there are also questions on corporate houses, various government departments who seek to benefit from the information gained about any kind of prevailing contract, prospective work or just a suspected case of corruption which negatively affects their interests.

The most surprising thing about applications to the DDA is that its pretty evident that a lot of DDA officials are using the RTI to settle intra/inter-departmental issues and raising questions about the general functioning of the DDA. These musings within the DDA often take the shape of settling personal vendettas using RTI. But these cases are an exception, rather than the norm.

The role of RTI in raising awareness and generating public opinion can’t be denied. From the welfare of the poor and the homeless to the banning of sale of narcotic substance, citizens have tried to question the government on many important issues. They have tried to direct government’s attention towards forgotten matters and bring out the flaws in our system of governance. The most important flaws, which courtesy RTI, are out in the public is the tremendous gap between existing policies and their implementation. By focusing on it citizens have certainly helped in improving their lives, the lives of the people around them and most importantly the state of governance. With the increasing awareness amongst citizens about the the value of RTI as a tool, one can picture a more accountable, transparent government in the future.

Alas, only if the fictitious Khoslas of "Khosla Ka Ghosla" fame had been able to use the RTI, they would not have fallen victim to a land extortion racket.

Abhishek is an intern with the Accountability Initiative. He is a graduate from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

FAQs on NRHM Fund Flows

2010-05-24T02:31:00.000-07:00

By Sruti Bandyopadhyay

The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) aims at strengthening the financial management structure and accounting systems so as to conform to best practices and meet accounting and auditing standards, at all levels. However, on several fronts, achievements have fallen short.

1. At what level can one identify the variations in reported figures?

Answer: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report observed that at times, variations were noticed between the funds releases by GOI and those received by State Health Society (SHS).
a) For FY 2007-08, the figures released to SHS, Andhra Pradesh (reported by GOI) was Rs. 597.83 crore. However the SHC reported to have received only Rs. 556.96 crore.
b) Even there is a gap between the funds released by SHS to District Health Society (DHC) and funds received by DHS. For FY 2008-09, Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh had reportedly received only Rs. 951.75lakhs, however as per the SHC’s record, they have released Rs.1131.13 lakhs.

2. How regular is the fund flow from SHC to DHC?

Answer: Considerable fund remains with ICICI bank (banking partner in 13 states), both at State and District levels, till such time they were actually utilised. In Kerala, the monthly balance in the ICICI bank account of the SHS ranged between Rs. 17.52 crore to Rs. 86.12 crore during 2007-08. Average monthly balance worked out to Rs. 49.52 crore.

3. Does this unspent amount earn interest?

Answer: As per the NRHM framework, funds were to be kept in interest bearing bank accounts. However, in two States, unspent funds were not kept in interest bearing accounts.
a) In Assam, DHS Lakhimpur kept Rs.1.20 crore in current account
b) Similarly, in Bihar, SHS deposited Rs. 106.76 crore in March 2007 in non-interest bearing account
c) DHS, Bhojpur kept the NRHM funds in a current account and sustained an interest loss of Rs 37.42 lakh as of June 2008.

4. Has the money always get spent on prescribed line items?

Answer: As per rules, funds were required to be spent for the purpose for which they were intended. But that is not always the case.
For instance, for FY 2008-09, in Karnakta, Rs. 0.36 crores of NRHM fund was spent on purchase of
i) four wheelers under Kysanur Forest Disease Control Programme, ii) control of Handigodu disease, iii) and even on Mysore Dasara Exhibition.

5. What is the experience so far with the state wise audited reports?

Answer: Cases of discrepancy between opening balance of SHSs and DHSs, difference between cash balance depicted in accounts and bank pass book, inconsistency between opening balance of the current year and closing balance of the previous year etc. were observed.
In Bihar, four different opening balances as on 1 April 2005 were noticed in four different sets of documents of SHS detailed below:
Opening balance Amount (Rs. in crore) as on 01-04-2005
As per SOE--------- ---------------------47.66
As per annual account of 2005-06 ----45.12
As per financial statement -------------52.67
As per Bank account -------------------43.78

6. So, after spending this huge sum of money every year, does all PHC/SC/CHS have atleast electricity facility?

Answer: No. For example, as per latest figures available, by the end of FY 2008-09,
A) In Bihar 72 SC and 30 PHC do not have electricity connection
B) In Arunachal Pradesh 37 SC and 5 PHC do not have electricity connection

7. Now that we know the problem, what is the solution?

Answer: There should be clear guideline for the nodal personnel to integrate data under various NRHM components at the DHC and SHS level.
a) Unique identification number for institutions (UIID), in line with UID, might make the fund flow tracking process easier to operate and monitor. It would provide the authorities a tool to make timely interventions.
b) We should also have a country wide unique accounting and reporting framework. The format should be user friendly and should not vary from state to state. As part of this new format the district level accountant should have the capability to consolidate realtime data presented in Rogi Kalyan Samiti’s (RSK) meetings.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative

UPA First-Year Performance Review: Mixed Results, Promising Future?

2010-05-20T01:53:00.000-07:00

As the UPA-II completes its first year, there have been a series of articles in the media assessing its performance on various fronts. Livemint has published a review of the UPA’s reform agena, Good Moves, Bad Press, and posted a podcast discussion with AI’s Yamini Aiyar on the UPA’s successes and failures. Click here to see a slideshow summarizing the major UPA policies. The economy appears to have rebounded well after the global financial meltdown, but according to Rajya Sabha member N.K. Singh, the government is stalling on the economic front and needs fresh initiatives and resolve. Listen to chief statistician of India Pronab Sen speak on the present state of the Indian economy under the UPA and what predictions can be drawn for the future, and view a graphic summary on the ups and downs of the economy over the year.

The UPA intended to focus on infrastructure development as a core interest over the past year, however its achievements on various infrastructure fronts have been mixed. Gokul Chaudhry, a partner at BMR advisors, provides perspective on the UPA’s challenges and successes in developing infrastructure in this audio discussion.

Finally, the Economic Times’ Debate Section includes a series on the UPA’s performance with perspectives from the CPI, the UPA, and the Opposition. Brinda Karat comments on how the diminished presence of the Left this year has led to a more opportunistic government, less focused on policies for the masses and more interested in its own agendas and the desires of powerful special interest groups. Salman Khurshid points toward the transformations in rural India, and the reforms made in education, law, and in areas concerning equality and minority empowerment as powerful indicators of the UPA’s success, and optimistically highlights the potential success of policies on the horizon. Arun Jaitley however, highlights the PM’s lack of control and what he views as a tendency of the government to favour the corrupt.

Mid Day Meal Scheme - Centralisation is no panacea

2010-05-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

Gayatri Sahgal

The National programme for Nutritional Support for Primary Education commonly referred to as the Mid Meal Scheme (MDM’s) is aimed at providing supplementary nutrition to primary school children with the overall objective of enhancing enrollment, retention and participation of children while simultaneously improving their nutritional status. Under the scheme every child in every government school and government assisted primary school is provided with a prepared mid day meal with a minimum calorie content of 450 calories and 12 grams of protein on a daily basis for a minimum of 200 days.

A far cry from providing such benefits, the functioning of MDM’s in Delhi has most recently been found to impede rather than improve the nutritional status of children in government schools. Last week 29 children studying in a government girls middle school in Hauz Qazi near Ajmeri Gate, fell ill after consuming ‘choley puri’ served as part of the mid day meal. While a case was registered with the police, school and government authorities responded by dismissing claims of illness pointing out that they were psychological in nature. According to the State Education Minister, Arivnder Singh Lovely, ‘somebody had spread a rumour that there was an insect in the food due to which students started feeling sick’. This incident comes in the wake of a similar case in the November 2009 when 125 children from a government school in Trilokpari fell ill after consuming the mid day meal. Following large scale protest by parents and opposition parties the Delhi government responded by suspending the MDM scheme for two days to review it’s functioning. Additionally the license of the society responsible for providing such food was also cancelled and samples of the contaminated food were taken for examination.

Ironically such instances have emerged despite the move by the Department of Education (the nodal agency responsible for the implementation of the MDM scheme) to outsource the responsibility of supplying MDM’s to a number of NGO’s/Societies. Unlike states which follow a decentralized model wherein food is prepared within the school premises by a cook or a helper, the Department of Education has opted for a centralized model where an external agency prepares and supplies meals to schools. The rationale behind the adoption of this model was the belief that food prepared in a centralized kitchen would ensure the provision of hygienic and nutritious food as well as allow for the optimum utilization of infrastructural facilities. It was felt that only a centralized model allowed for mechanized food preparation which was touted as being efficient as it would simultaneously lower labour costs and by limiting the chances of human contact, also serve to lower the occurrence of food contamination. Moreover the reduced financial responsibility of the DOE within such a model was also an important motivation for its adoption. Today there are 11 NGO’s/Societies who operate a total of 13 kitchens and supply food to 1.1 lack children who are covered under the scheme.

Currently the MDM scheme is monitored by a range of bodies, the foremost being the School Mid-day Meal Committees (SMDMC). The (SMDMC) is constituted at the school level and comprises of the Head of School, Teacher in charge of the MDM, Home Science teacher, at least 3 mothers of children from different classes, the DDO of the school and one Vidyalaya Kalyan Samiti (VKS) member. These committees are empowered with the responsibility of receiving and monitoring the MDM’s on a daily basis. At the department level, a Zonal Level Steering Cum Monitoring Committee, comprising of the Education Officer of the zone, two principals, two parents and one VKS member is expected to draw up a month-wise programme of monitoring the distribution of the MDM and inform the DDEs (District Deputy Directors of Education) about the same. Education Officers (EO’s) are also expected to be present as far as possible in schools falling within their respective zones at the time of distribution of the MDM. The monitoring of the working of the SDMC’s and the Zonal level steering committee is the responsibility of the DDE’s. Complaints from parents, schools or service providers are examined and resolved by the DDEs. In addition MDM guidelines also allow for appointment of independent agencies to monitor and evaluate the agencies.

In spite of the formulation of such a robust monitoring structure, its implementation has been found to be far from adequate. According to a recent study conducted by the Supreme Court Commissioners Office regarding the functioning of the MDM’s in the city, the participation of beneficiaries particularly parents and children in monitoring bodies such as the SDMC has been found to be minimal. In many instances testing of food is only done once the food is delivered to the schools. Teachers often do not visit the kitchens to test the quality of food provided. Furthermore EO’s also rarely visit schools to oversee the distribution of MDM’s. In 2008 out of the 136.86 lakhs which were allocated towards Management and Monitoring Expenditure, the total expenditure under this head was only 1.40 lakhs (1%) with expenditure on school monitoring committees accounting for 0%. Moreover within the 1.40 lakhs which were spent, management expenses accounted for a bulk of the share. External monitoring and evaluation expenditure during that year was also reported as being nil.

Thus problems of food contamination and lack of quality hardly seem surprising in light of such ineffective systems of monitoring. The Department of Education’s eagerness in outsourcing the supply of food grains was not matched with an emphasis on strengthening the monitoring and accountability provisions. The centralized model was heralded as a panacea without due cognizance of the fact that unlike a decentralized model where the suppliers and the beneficiaries come in direct contact, the new model served to increase the distance between the suppliers and the ultimate beneficiaries making it more difficult for the beneficiaries to monitor the supply of services.

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.

Livemint series: MGNREGA Implementation in 5 States

2010-05-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is considered one of the largest social safety nets of its kind, spending under which has totaled almost Rs. 80,000 crore in the past four years. Livemint has recently published an extensive series on MGNREGA, assessing its implementation in various regions. The record and status is patchy but hopeful, and continued government commitment to the program appears crucial for its success.

Uttar Pradesh: Bundelkhand is one of the least developed regions in India, making it an ideal environment to test the effectiveness of MGNREGA. The scheme has had few successes here and the defining narrative here is one of corruption and ignorance. To read the Livemint article, click here.

Chhattisgarh: With social progress and development widely considered effective barriers to the lure of Maoism, the success of MGNREGA in this region could prove especially significant. While initial results are hopeful, the state is still developing infrastructure to help MGNREGA projects take off. To read the Livemint article, click here.

Rajasthan: The MGNREGA appears to have altered both economic and social dynamics in the region. Almost two-thirds of the people employed under the scheme in this state are women, and their rising socio-economic independence is contributing significantly to their empowerment. To the read the Livemint article, click here.

Andhra Pradesh: The state is amongst the top-performers under the MGNREGA. Unlike most other states, officials in Andhra Pradesh have adopted an entirely different delivery model which bypasses the panchayats. The scheme has garnered impressive performance metrics with its unique delivery model which has remained successful. To read the Livemint article, click here.

Orissa: The lack of significant change brought about by the MGNREGA scheme in the severely poor, drought-afflicted region of Kalahandi highlights that it has not been able to avoid the usual trappings that hinder the effectiveness of social development programs. Primarily due to low awareness, the scheme has failed in its promise to provide a reliable safety net for the poor. To read the Livemint article, click here.

NREGA wage payments through banks: Taking Stock

2010-05-17T03:18:00.000-07:00

Anindita Adhikari

In May 2008, the Government declared that wage payments, under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the world’s largest rural public works programme, would be made through banks. According to a recent announcement, under the new system of financial inclusion 8.60 NREGA workers accounts have been opened and about 82% of wages i.e. close to 17,000 crores have been disbursed through these accounts up to December 2009 - accounting for 70% of the expenditure under the programme. Although this new system has been hailed as a foolproof, cost-effective solution to reduce leakages and to promote greater transparency, the transition was rushed and several complications with the new system are now becoming apparent.

Delays in wage disbursement: The issue of delays in wage payments is one of the most serious problems with the system of bank payments. Reports from several states including Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal indicate the problem of delayed payments and dwindling interest in employment under the NREGA is rampant across several states.

It is a well established argument that the coverage of banks and post offices in rural India is patchy and as a consequence workers especially in remote parts of the country find it difficult to travel long distances to collect their wages causing delays in payments. Interestingly though findings from a survey in UP and Jharkhand indicate that close to 90% of workers who lived more than 5 km from a bank/post office expressed a preference for bank payments over cash despite the distance, indicating the deeper problems lie elsewhere. An important cause of the severe delays in the disbursement of wages is the institutional incapacity of rural banks to handle the huge volume of accounts. The shortage of staff and technology is most acute in post offices where accounts are managed manually through log journals.

However, the cause of delayed payments is more complicated than this. There are several bottlenecks associated with the different steps in the wage payment process: Filling the muster roll, measuring work and matching with attendance, preparing payment orders, sanctioning of cheques by officials and finally crediting of wages in workers accounts by the bank. Centre-state financial norms are not always clear and often mired in politics causing significant delays in the flow of funds from the central to state governments. A detailed discussion on these delays at different levels can be found in a recently published article by Reetika Khera called ‘Wages of Delay’.

Although such delays legally entitle workers to unemployment benefit, compensation has rarely been paid which is a clear violation of the Act. The government has acknowledged this gap and has sought to rectify it by directing state governments to ensure that the ‘twin legal mandates’ of wage payment within 15 days and through institutional accounts are ‘scrupulously adhered to’. A host of directives follow such as holding of a monthly Gram Rozgar Diwas at the panchayat level in which issues of payment backlogs will be cleared, strict monitoring of timely payment of wages by the District Programme Coordinator etc.

The ‘Business Correspondent Model’ which is currently being rolled out by the government is an attempt to address this problem of delayed payments and ensure that the rural poor have timely access to financial services. How this works is that the business correspondent (BC) would, on behalf of the banks, for a commission, deliver financial services to ‘clients’ though appropriate technology like handheld computer devices. However, given that the problem of delays is more complex than a simple issue of institutional access, the solutions might lie beyond the scope of this administrative ‘innovation’.

Corruption: While the move of separating the implementation and payment agencies has countered the earlier forms of corruption such as siphoning of funds, some forms of embezzlement have persisted and some new forms have emerged. The first is through ‘deception’ where often the abhikarta (implementing agency) in collusion with the bank officials withdraws money from the accounts of workers without their knowledge. The second is through ‘exploitation’ where genuine workers withdraw their wages themselves but are forced to hand over part of their money to the contractor or sarpanch based on a pre-decided ‘deal’. The third method is where workers ‘collude’ with the implementing agency and fake names are entered in the muster roll on the basis of which wages are withdrawn.

While the first type of embezzlement can be effectively dealt with through strict enforcement of certain minimum safeguards such as ensuring money is only withdrawn by the account holder. The other two types of embezzlement are perhaps more difficult to counter because they are borne out of an essentially feudal, exploitative set up in which rural banks function.

Taking strict action against such corruption, the government has restated that unfair practices in the system of wage payments will be punishable under section 25 of the Act. However the record for invoking this clause has been quite abysmal. While enforcing this penalty clause which allows for a fine up to 1000 will ensure accountability to some extent, there is a pressing need to restore transparency safeguards already built into the act. Public scrutiny of wages through reading out muster rolls and regular updating of job cards needs to be reinstated. This is a powerful practice because it enables workers to verify their attendance and monitor wage payments themselves, thereby curbing corruption.

The switch to bank payments has without a doubt provided substantial protection against embezzlement and is a critical step towards ensuring greater accountability in the disbursement of wages under the NREGA. However, the issue of delays in wage payment needs to be tackled swiftly by both streamlining processes and mechanisms under the system of bank payments as well as reinforcing traditional safeguards.

Anindita Adhikari is a Research Associate with the ASER Centre.

SC Upholds the MPLADs Scheme: A Questionable Judgement?

2010-05-07T04:22:00.000-07:00

Yamini Aiyar

On Thursday, the Supreme Court Bench passed an order upholding the disastrous MPLAD Scheme – claiming it was meant for public purpose. The MPLAD is a disaster not because, as newspapers often report, of the extent of corruption in MPLAD expenditures and the extent to which these schemes are used to dispense patronage – these are problems faced by most public sector programs. It’s a disaster because it encourages MP’s to overstep their domain, performing a function that is not officially their and weakening the constitutional separation of roles and responsibilities across jurisdictions. All this has serious consequences on strengthening accountability. Let’s consider the arguments.

The first issue is that MPLADs assigns executive functions to legislators and thereby confuses the separation of powers – after all should MP’s be administering funds and determining their specific resource allocation? This creates a conflict of interest between the legislator and the executive and seriously compromises the oversight function that legislators ought to play. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission used this critique to recommend that the scheme be abolished.

Another argument, made by the 2002 National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC), is that the MPLADS scheme violates the distribution of powers between the union, states and local governments as defined in the constitution. Therefore, it is inconsistent with the spirit of federalism. The NCRWC report points out that all the activities on which MP’s can spend their funds are already on state lists. Furthermore, the 73rd and 74th Constitutional amendments mandated that many of these become activities to be undertaken by Panchayats and Municipal governments. Thus the scheme seriously undermines local bodies by creating incentives for MPs to provide basic civic services such as roads, bridges and street-lights that are constitutionally the responsibility of local governments.

In the present system, individual MPs decide how to spend the money and funds are disbursed through the district administration. Local bodies are neither consulted nor involved in the details of execution despite the fact that articles 243G and 243W of the constitution entrust local bodies with the powers to prepare and implement plans for economic development and social justice. In recognition of this problem, the National Advisory Council in a report to the government in 2005, recommended that the scheme guidelines be changed to require that the funds be spent through local bodies. These criticisms point to two much deeper, unresolved questions confronting our democracy. First, what is the role of the MP, the MLA and the local body representative? Second, what do we, as voters, hold them accountable for?

From an MP’s perspective, the MPLAD scheme is important because it allows them to tangibly and quickly respond to their constituents’ needs. At election time, these achievements can be drawn upon to highlight the MP’s performance. After all, what happens in Parliament is so far removed from the typical voter, that this becomes an easy way for an MP to demonstrate five years of work. Nevertheless, this presents a dilemma. Since the constitution already demands that these functions be performed by local governments, not the MP, who should be held accountable by the voter? This dilemma has significantly obfuscated accountabilities and confused voter expectation.

However, the bigger question we need to ask is: should this be the role of the MP? India decentralized because it recognized that local governments are best suited to assess local needs and are better placed to respond to them than State or Center. Local governments were created and entrusted with this responsibility by virtue of their ‘localness’ - an MP typically represents 10-15 lakh voters, while a Gram Panchayat represents on average 3000 voters - and because they can be held directly accountable for fulfilling these needs. Ironically, Panchayats and Municipalities are starved for funds to perform their constitutionally assigned roles, while MPs, thanks to the MPL LADS enjoy the privilege of an uninterrupted yearly flow of funds to do the job of Panchayats and Municipalities. Given that local bodies are better placed to deliver civic services then it may be wiser to devolve funds directly to them rather than to the MPs.

This is not to suggest that the MP is not responsible or accountable for the development of his or her constituency. Rather, it suggests that the MP should do what he or she is best equipped to do. Instead of directly spending money on civic services an MP ought to be lobbying for funds from the central government to reach local bodies and pushing for appropriate policy decisions. To ensure that services reach their constituents, the MP should monitor the functioning of the local bodies and leave them to do what they are best equipped to do: provide the civic services demanded by their constituents.

The MPLAD scheme has been dogged by controversy since its inception. By putting its weight behind the scheme, the Supreme Court has simply given legitimacy to a scheme that is fundamentally unconstitutional and this is a real blow to democracy.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director, Accountability Initiative.

Yes, how many deaths will it take till we know...

2010-05-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

…that too many children have died?

Maitreyi Bordia Das

I adapt this from Dylan’s famous 1962 lyrics, but it is nowhere more true than for Adivasis or tribal peoples (called Scheduled Tribes) in India.

Come monsoon, the Indian media is rife with stories of child deaths in tribal areas, frequently reported as “malnutrition deaths”. Kalahandi district in Orissa for instance, had been a metaphor for starvation due to press reports dating back to the 1980s. Melghat area in Maharashtra has similarly surfaced in the press especially during the monsoon when migrant Adivasis return to their villages and to empty food stocks in the home. This is followed by public outrage, sometimes by public interest litigation and often a haggling over numbers.

We recently published a working paper that looks at child mortality among India’s adivasis – the starkest manifestation of their deprivation. We find that an average Indian child has a 25 percent lower likelihood of dying under the age of five compared to an adivasi child. In rural areas, where the majority of adivasi children live, they made up about 11 percent of all births but 23 percent of all deaths in the five years preceding the National Family Heath Survey 2005. While there has been progress in child survival over the years, and much greater vigilance, which often leads to these stories surfacing in the media at all, the fact remains that children in tribal areas are at much greater risk of dying than those in other areas.

Our analysis based on national data from the National Family and Health Survey 2005 has three findings. First, a disproportionately high number of child deaths are concentrated among adivasis, especially in the 1-5 age group and in those states and districts where there is a high concentration of adivasis. Any effort to reduce child morality in the aggregate will have to focus more squarely on lowering mortality among the adivasis. Second, the gap in mortality between adivasi children and the rest really appears after the age of one. In fact, before the age of one, tribal children face more or less similar odds of dying as other children. But these odds significantly reverse later. This calls for a shift in attention from infant mortality or in general under-five mortality to factors that cause a wedge between tribal children and the rest between the ages of one and five. Third, the analysis goes contrary to the conventional narrative of poverty being the primary factor driving differences between mortality outcomes.

There are many small and very important initiatives that have lowered child mortality among adivasis, but how do you scale them up?

India is not alone in having such poor outcomes for its adivasis – called “indigenous peoples” in the global context. A recent global report on indigenous peoples edited by Gillette Hall and Harry Patrinos was released yesterday in New York at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. And it shows remarkable congruence in the processes and outcomes that exclude indigenous peoples the world over.

Very soon, a new report on social exclusion in India that we have been working on will be ready for review – and it also addresses adivasi deprivation using national data. We look at poverty rates and the fact that adivasis in 2004 were where the average Indian was twenty years ago. I will keep you posted through this blog.

Maitreyi Bordia Das is Senior Social Protection Specialist in the South Asia Human Development Department at the World Bank in Washington DC. This piece was cross posted from Maitreyi's Blog. Log on to read more of her posts.

World Press Freedom Day - Special focus on Right to Know

2010-05-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today (May 3rd) is World Press Freedom day. Ever since it’s proclamation by the UN in 1993, the World Press Freedom Day has aimed at raising awareness about media freedom issues and to promote the right of journalists to collect and disseminate information without risk to life or liberty. The theme for this year's World Press Day is the "Right to Know" or “Freedom of Information". Today more than 80 countries around the world have introduced laws that guarantee citizens the right to access information held by public authorities. The Right to know has been recognized as an essential part of the right to freedom of expression under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the World Press Freedom Day Conference organised by UNESCO, Governments have been called on to enact laws guaranteeing the right to information. Participants of World Press Freedom Day on Monday adopted the Brisbane Declaration. The declaration calls on UNESCO member states "to enact legislation guaranteeing the right to information in accordance with the internationally-recognized principle of maximum disclosure".It also demands that media companies to raise awareness of freedom of expression and the right to information, and for UNESCO to aid the development and implementation of new laws. (Read more...)

In addition, Access Info Europe and Transparency International, together with members of the Freedom of Information Advocates Network and the UNCAC Coalition, are marking World Press Freedom Day by submitting requests for information in 30 countries around the globe under the Tell Us What You've Done Initiative. (Read More.....)

Community-Funded Participatory Journalism: New era of Grievance Redresser

2010-05-03T01:30:00.000-07:00

By Sruti Bandyopadhyay

The Indian government is spending crores of rupees on welfare schemes. However that is news to Sharan, whose house is half built as the money from Indira Vikas Yojna was inadequate to even complete the roof. Sharan lives in a village just 10 km away from Purnia town. While symbols of modernity like mobile phone have made inroads, welfare lags. Sharan said officials asked for a 200 rupee bribe for a job card under NREGA -a charge echoed across several villagers.

“Does the government know that we are willing to work under NREGA and still not getting any job? Where should we go and complain then?” Sharan asked. Who can possibly give Sharan his answers?

The concept of community co-funded participatory journalism aims to put consumers of news in touch with journalists and publishers – allowing the consumers to request news about topics of interest. If you have 50 people, you can all hire a journalist from the nearest block office to investigate the problems in the fund flow management under various social sector schemes. This report would enable the villagers to identify the right person in the long chain of officials and demand accountability from him.

Now the obvious question how it is different from other existing tools and how do I envision it as a tool that can improve service delivery mechanism? In this model, there is a direct connection between the consumer and the producer. People are asking for reliable information from an individual, not organizations. In this set up, end users would decide what stories need to be told. Journalist can investigate about the origins of the problem and how the concerned authority could possibly remediate it. There would be media centres in each block, and would be run by local graduates. Reporters are selected from district based panel and posted in a particular district office. They need to be present at the block office on few given dates and time, to register request from the villagers. The cost of this time bound investigation would be shared by the government and by the fund raised (tax empted) from the common people. All the donation would go to the selected scheme/topic and place the donor want it to go. There would be guidelines specifying the standards of remuneration. It would be based on competitive rates throughout the country for freelancers. If a news organization wants to buy exclusive rights to the story - then they can do so by paying the government.

Government would only fully sponsor two stories per month for each block. Beyond these two stories, if the money doesn’t materialize, the idea goes unreported. Local people can report if their information needs are met at the end of the investigation. No one person can donate more than 20% of the total cost, and the report needs to be peer reviewed to avoid unethical practices. The government can put 5% of the annual social sector allocation for this project. For 2010-11, the amount comes out to be Rs 14, 741 crores of rupees.

Copies of report would reach the DM, MP, MLA and BDO or the councillor (depending on rural or urban set up). Pictorial representations need to be created for the illiterate consumers (who requested for the news). There would be designated media partners to publish or broadcast the stories on local news channel.

To equip thousands of illiterate citizens with the tools for demanding accountability from the public service provider is not an easy task. We certainly need to experiment. Some of them might not work. But we need to launch a lot of boats.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher with the Accountability Initiative

So Where's the Debate?

2010-04-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

The Budget Session of Parliament has been on from February 22nd and will continue till May 7th , but with a little over a week left of the session, it begs the question – where has been the debate? Rather – what has Parliament been debating ?

Nearly every day these last few weeks, we hear about adjournments to Parliament due to disruptions by the opposition – from IPLgate to MP’s demanding suspension of Question Hour over the phone tapping issue. But while Parliament has been busy creating a ruckus over Shashi Tharoor, IPL, and the phone tapping scandal – some of the bigger questions affecting millions of people have remained unasked. Have we forgotten what the main functions of Parliament are?

In a recent article, MR Madhavan of PRS legislative research had pointed out that "Parliament’s main functions are legislative, oversight-related and representative; its mandate does not primarily include investigative work”. Parliament is an important forum where critical public debate can incur and elected representatives get an opportunity to ask the hard questions on behalf of the people they are accountable to and in turn get asked questions for which they in turn are accountable.

Yet a look at last year’s Budget Session gives a clear idea of the lack of adequate debate on the social sector - issues that affect millions of Indians on a day to day basis. Of the nearly 5400 questions asked during the session last year, only 5 percent of them were asked to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 4 percent to the Ministry of Human Resource Development and a meager 2 percent to the Ministry of Rural Development. This is despite the fact that the government spent Rs 3,98,828 crores in 2008-09 on the social sector according to the revised estimates by the Economic Survey.

Even in terms of the type of questions asked some of the big issues remain unaddressed.

For example, while elementary education constitutes over 50 percent of total allocations for education, most of the questions last year pertained to higher and university education. Moreover, questions continue to be concentrated on access and coverage issues – enrolments, construction of new building etc, with quality education receiving a lesser priority. This is despite the fact that the ASER report released earlier this year had found that while 96% of children in rural India in the age group of 6-14 years are now enrolled in school, the quality of education is still quite poor. However, in the entire budget session last year, there were only 15 instances where questions related to teachers were asked – with 8 of those relating to recruitment and only 3 relating to quality including teacher trainings.

Similarly, while rural development particularly NREGA ( now MGNREGA) has been receiving a huge push in terms of money allocations – it received Rs. 36,750 crores in 2008-09 – up from Rs. 14,220 in 2007-08 – there were only 39 instances of questions relating to it.

In the backdrop of rising food prices and huge problems in effective targeting of ration cards ( from July 2000 till December 2009 – 53 lakh fake ration cards in West Bengal, 10 lakh in Andhra Pradesh and 7 lakh in Gujarat have been discovered and destroyed and there probably exists many that are yet to be discovered)- even the issue of Public Distribution System and Food Security got only 31 questions. Rural drinking water and sanitation, another major problem – received 16 questions. With numerous disruptions during the Session this year, this record may be worse.

As the Budget Session enters its last week let’s try and remember what the main functions of the Parliament are and leave the investigative work to the already existing bodies who have the required skills and expertise such as the CBI, CID’s, Enforcement Directorates etc, and start asking some of these questions.

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator, PAISA Project at the Accountability Initiative

From the right to education to the right to food

2010-04-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

Yamini Aiyar

From the right to education to the right to food, solving our development problems by clothing India’s citizens with new rights seems to be the flavor of our times. What should we make of this rise of rights? Skeptics have argued (and with some conviction) that this expansion of rights serves merely to raise expectations of delivery from a state that has proved conclusively that its greatest characteristic is its inefficiency. And so these new rights amount to nothing but political rhetoric. In a recent article on the subject the Economist suggests just this: ‘Perhaps its only indisputable achievement is political - as potential vote-winners, rights-based schemes are often attractive to politicians, no matter how effective they are’. And perhaps because of their political salience, another set of criticisms is that they serve as a diversion from the real challenge of creating an accountable and responsive state. While it could be argued that creating rights might in fact do just this, in reality – in a system where grievance redressal mechanisms are barely functional and the courts are no different to other arms of the Indian state (and should judges really be making decisions on areas where they have no competency?) – these new rights can never be made justiciable and thus have little credibility. (See these two links on the subject:
http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20100413/1241/top-i-know-my-rights.html
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/when-the-blueprint-isnt-sound/606392/

So do we dismiss this expansion of rights as nothing but new labels on old bottles that will dilute their own credibility, as mere political rhetoric that will divert from the real challenge at hand? I think not. To understand the potential of these new rights, it is important to think of them in the context of the power dynamics that shape state-citizen relationships in India. It is now a commonplace observation that in much of India citizen- state relationships exist more in the realm of patronage - the paternalistic, mai-baap sarkar that distributes state largess – than in the realm of rights and responsibilities. In this sense Indian democracy has fallen short of its ideal –honoring the standing of citizens and free and equal persons. The invocation of the language of rights in citizen’s everyday dealings with the state offers the opportunity to re –frame modes of citizen engagement from that of being passive recipients to becoming active agents that ‘demand’ services as their right. And this is critical to accountability. In a panel discussion we organized a few months ago, Nikhil Dey made the interesting point that ‘accountability from, the citizen’s point of view, is inextricably tied to basic entitlements. Who can I hold accountable if I don’t have an entitlement?’

Consider the movement for the right to information – arguably the first (and perhaps most successful) effort in India to expand the notion of fundamental rights to the domain of social and economic rights. The movement pushed the frontiers of the notion of access to information to offer a radical interpretation of access to information as a ‘right’ that is fundamental to citizen’s right to participate in government and hold it accountable. This interpretation was premised on the notion that the provision of a ‘right’ fundamentally alters power asymmetries between citizens and the state by giving citizens an entitlement which they have a ‘right’ to demand. Two of Accountability Initiative’s researchers have recently completed a study of the effects of a citizen’s organization in Delhi – the Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) – that has been working with slum dwellers (mostly women) to invoke the right to information as a means to access basic services – ration cards, widow’s pensions from the state. SNS has also been running information campaigns to build resident capacity to engage with the formal government system. A language of rights and entitlements is integral to SNS’s information campaigns. The study finds that making citizens aware of their rights and entitlements and pushing them to invoke these rights to access services has had an empowering influence on slum dwellers who are have increasingly more confidence in making demands directly to officials and politicians. In fact the study finds that awareness of rights and entitlements and the invocation of these rights in dealings with officials– particularly the right to information has had considerable success in enabling citizens to access basic services.

But in all of this one needs to acknowledge that the aspirations of rights approaches will only be met if one addresses the hard challenge of ensuring that entitlements are realized. We need to think long and hard about creating effective grievance redressal; about undertaking much needed administrative reforms and at the very minimum about ensuring that people are made adequately aware of their rights and what this means for accessing services from the state. The rhetoric of rights adopted by the current political dispensation offers an opportunity to do this. But this will require concerted civil society action. Can civil society rise to the challenge? And will civil society pressure be enough?

In sum, rights approaches could be the starting point of re-articulation of citizen state relationships – one that could fundamentally alter the nature of the Indian state. Or they could end up proving critics right and end up as yet another moment in Indian democracy that never took off.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director, Accountability Initiative.

Accountability News Update - 16 April 2010

2010-04-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

A fortnightly round up of accountability news and views from around the world.

UK: Web-inventor calls for government data transparency
The inventor of the World Wide Web talks about the need for countries to open up and make public data accessible to all citizens.

Pakistan: Access to information now a fundamental right
The Right to Information is now a fundamental right in Pakistan following the insertion of Article 19A in the Constitution via the 18th Amendment Bill. Under article 19A, “Every citizen shall have the right to have access to information in all matters of public importance subject to regulation and reasonable restriction imposed by the law.”

US: Calls for ‘YouTube’ of Government data
US Technology Chief, Vivek Kundra has encouraged technology developers to create a ‘YouTube’ of government data in the US. The tool would enable people to “slice and dice” data to create mashups and web applications to reveal new patterns and carry out analysis.

UK: New Anti-bribery legislation comes into force
A new Bribery law in the UK heralds a clampdown on large UK businesses making payments to officials overseas to facilitate business, say experts. The new act has introduced an offence of corporate failure to prevent bribery. It is the first time such a law has existed in the UK. It also requires companies to have "adequate processes" in place to prevent such offences.

Canada: Delays leave access to information rights 'totally obliterated'
A recent report on the performance of Canada’s Access to Information Act flags chronic delays as a serious impediment to citizens trying to access information. The report, entitled Out of Time, documents the extent of delays and identifies factors contributing to them, based on an assessment of how 24 federal institutions responded to access to information requests in 2008-2009. These institutions account for 88 percent of the requests Canadians submitted that year.

Brazil: Congress passes Right to Information Bill
The Lower House of the Brazilian Congress has approved a draft bill on the Right to Information. The RTI Bill now awaits approval by the Senate and if passed will give effect to the right to information enshrined in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988.

What gets measured gets done - but about outcomes?

2010-04-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

Sapna Desai

Nirvikar Singh’s recent piece on Janani Suraksha Yojna (JSY) (see link) is a welcome call to address the ‘social determinants’ of health. The causes of the causes, so to speak, of illness and mortality, like education, environment and income are indeed key indicators of women’s health status and survival.

Specifically regarding JSY, however, most evaluations miss one critical issue: the quality of services. While JSY promotes institutional delivery for a woman through a financial incentive, there is no guarantee that she receives the proper services that she deserves. In fact, most JSY-used facilities are overcrowded, often with more than one woman sharing a bed.
Accountability mechanisms rightly focus on the question of inputs - are funds being disbursed – but what measure of the recipient’s care? The true measure of JSY’s success will be to see if more women are actively seeking care before, during and after delivery from a properly equipped institution. And more critically, do they receive quality care?

If we are to look at the larger issue of gendercide and ‘saving India’s women’, we must look much further than institutional delivery. The deeper accountability issue is if women can access basic health services, well before pregnancy. For example, I find that gynecological infection is the most common health complaint amongst SEWA’s members across 9 states of India. Yet if they try, women cannot access basic treatment at the primary or block level in most parts of rural India. Gynecologists are not posted, pap tests are not available, and laboratory diagnosis for reproductive tract infections is unheard of – leaving women with expensive private care or none at all. Even she is undernourished, hemoglobin testing, food supplements and iron pills are limited to pregnant women.

Thus by the time a pregnant woman interacts with the public health system under JSY, the underlying causes of maternal mortality have long taken root. After her 24 hour delivery stint at the hospital, she is likely to remain far from institutions, at least until the next delivery.

To truly improve women and mother’s health, primary women’s health services – health information, nutritional support and gynecological care to start – must be available at the local level. In addition to the ASHA worker, we have a legion of dais highly skilled at providing women with doorstep health services. Though a pregnant woman may travel long distances for a delivery with a financial incentive, she certainly cannot sacrifice a day’s earnings for primary care. Locally available health care will promote her overall health status, which of course also equips her for a safer delivery at an institution if she chooses. And when she does seek that care under JSY, she must be entitled to quality.

Sapna Desai is Health Coordinator for the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Bharat, a national federation of women workers across 9 states.

Performance Management and Government?

2010-04-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

Mandakini Devasher Surie

Performance management and government – two words you don’t often hear together and when you do – you’re quite likely to roll your eyes and move on to the next headline. That’s what I used to do until I attended a SAARC workshop on “Government Performance Management” which changed my mind. The two-day workshop in New Delhi from 30-31 March 2010, brought together delegates from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan to discuss what government’s can do to improve their performance. Quite surprisingly the Indian government is doing a whole lot.

Under a directive from the Prime Minister’s Office, departments with uncharacteristic speed and efficiency have been implementing a new “Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System” (PMES) since 2009. At the heart of the PMES is a relatively simple concept – “what gets measured, gets managed”. It marks a shift away from traditional practices of measuring expenditures as outcomes to a more rigorous system of evaluating the performance of government departments. Steered by the Cabinet Secretariat’s Performance Management Division, the PMES is designed to help government departments define, measure and monitor their progress against defined targets and indicators.

How will it work?
At the beginning of each year (1 April), government departments have to develop a Results Framework Document (RFD) which is essentially a performance agreement signed between a Minister and the Secretary of a particular department. In the RFD, departments have to address three basic questions: i) what are the main objectives of the department for the year? ii) what actions are necessary to achieve these objectives and finally iii) what are the success indicators necessary to evaluate these actions. The matrix that results from this exercise is locked into an online MIS system which is then tracked through the year. The department’s progress against these set targets is first reviewed after 6 months and finally evaluated at the end of the year (31 March). Till date, 62 line ministries have signed up to the RFD and their RFDs can already be accessed online. Under discussion is also a controversial proposal to link 40% of a Secretary’s salary to the department’s performance. If implemented this would introduce a system of performance based pay never before seen in the history of Indian administration.

Potential roadblocks?
While all of this looks fantastic on paper, you have to wonder how it will work in practice given the scale and complexity of India’s governance and service delivery system. Take the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) for example; it is one of the largest ministries in the government with a budget of Rs 66137.86 crore for the year 2010-11. The Department of Rural Development – one of three departments within the Ministry - handles a range of social sector programmes including the NREGA, SGSY, PMGSY, IAY, NSAP and PURA. The scale of their interventions is tremendous: 28 states, 619 districts, 6484 blocks, 2.5 lakh panchayats, 15 lakh rural habitations and 542.90 lakh BPL households (data from MoRD). How do you begin to map all of this into a results based performance management system?

When you factor in the many centrally sponsored schemes and their complex funding and implementation structures – things get even more complicated. Here there are practical issues of coordination between different layers of bureaucracy, data and information gaps, limited implementation capacity, questions about the quality of services and even the quality of reporting. Over and above these implementation issues, there are broader questions about how the PMES will fit in with existing reporting and monitoring mechanisms which now include an Independent Evaluation Office and the Prime Ministers’ Delivery Monitoring Unit. Without sustained political will and proper incentives to see it through there is a real danger that the PMES will become just one amongst many well-intentioned but poorly implemented monitoring mechanisms – the ill-fated outcomes budget comes to mind.

Without a doubt, the government has its work cut out. But we have reasons to be optimistic. There is clearly a lot of political will and energy backing the PMES and its evident the Cabinet Secretariat means business. This is definitely one trend worth watching!

Mandakini Devasher Surie is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.

RTE sparks a centre-state row: We want your views!

2010-04-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

India made international headlines last week with the official enactment of Right to Education Act (RTE) guaranteeing the right to free and compulsory education to every child between the age group of 4 and 16 years. But barely a week after it was passed by Parliament, the RTE has been mired in an intense debate over centre-state relations. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati has led criticisms of the RTE, arguing that the new law puts an immense implementation and fiscal burden on already cash strapped states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. A number of states including West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar and Punjab have voiced similar concerns about how they will fund the RTE.

The current exchange of barbs and criticisms across party lines highlights an important question: in an increased era of centralization, where policies are designed by the centre but implemented by states – where do states find the resources to fund and implement such massive programs? And who is ultimately accountable for how these programs are rolled out on the ground? Who is answerable for how monies were spent, progress made and targets achieved? These questions are not restricted to the RTE but apply to the broader package of social reforms including the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, National Rural Health Mission, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission introduced by the government in the last few years.

What do you think? Write in and share your views with us.

Who Cares About Outcomes?

2010-04-01T05:23:00.000-07:00

Yamini Aiyar

I had almost forgotten, till I saw a copy at a friend’s office yesterday, that every year in Parliament’s budget session, apart from presenting the annual budget, the Government of India tables an outcomes budget where every ministry reports on its outcomes. Remiss as I was in forgetting, I can’t be blamed, entirely. The outcomes budget was launched amidst much talk of reform in 2005 by then finance minister P Chidambaram. In a promising budget speech, he said ‘I must caution that outlays do not necessarily result in outcomes’. ‘The people of this country,’ he went on to add, ‘are concerned with outcomes’. And to his credit he launched the outcomes budget. In its short five year existence, the budget has been nothing but a damp squib. So valued is the outcomes budget that it never makes even the inside pages of newspapers and if you want to look for them on line – well best of luck to you.

What went wrong? Well, like many things in government, the idea is a good one but its implementation nothing short of poor. There are two critical elements to a successful ‘outcomes budget’. First, it requires the identification of clear, concise and quantifiable outcome indicators. These indicators need to be tangible and realistic. Here the outcomes budget falls short. Indicators are vague – the health ministry describes ‘funding of institutions’ and ‘widening of surveillance mechanisms’ as some of its key outcomes- making measurement impossible and irrelevant.

Second, for an ‘outcomes budget’ to achieve results it must be accompanied by increased information on performance against these indicators. The Finance Minister emphasized this at the launch of the outcomes budget, by pointing out that the objective of the budget is to put critical data on expected outcomes in to the public domain and allow for public scrutiny. On this count too, the outcomes budget has fallen far short of expectations. The budget itself was launched with much media fanfare but over the years it has simply disappeared from the public radar. There is no evidence of any proactive effort by government agencies to generate and disseminate information on progress.

In today’s Mint, Sanjiv Misra, former member of the 13th Finance Commission made some interesting observations about the failure of the outcomes budget. He points out that for reforms like the Outcomes Budget to be successful it requires the “establishment of countrywide performance benchmarks and costing norms for the public goods and services supplied; development of measurable performance indicators for the objectives set out; development of performance monitoring systems to regularly collect data on the actual results achieved; independent third-party evaluation of major programmes; and use of performance contracts to enforce accountability of key actors.” He so argues for the need to link performance on outcomes budgeting with pay.

The interesting thing about India today is that we have all these design instruments in place and we speak the right ‘speak’. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest agree that outcomes matter. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest agree that these need to be monitored and that he failure to do just this is the cause of our persistent poor performance on human development. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest has some interesting ideas on how to address this problem. As we speak the cabinet secretariat is running a seminar on performance oriented monitoring in the civil services. In fact the performance management wing of the cabinet secretariat has signed a significant number of contracts with Government of India departments to performance criterion and goals and there are some whispers about introducing pay for performance measures. At the same time the planning commission seems to be moving towards setting up the Independent Evaluation Office and a few months ago, PMO set up a delivery monitoring unit. There is also much talk of using technology through the UID and other instruments to develop a transparent expenditure information network that will allow for transparency and regular tracking of government funds. All of which have the potential to address the problems reforms like the outcomes budget faces. But for these instruments to take effect, we need political will – and that as we all know is sadly missing. What we need now is not more instruments but a better understanding of how to circumvent this lack of political will and push for change.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director, Accountability Initiative.

Social audit under JNNURM

2010-03-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

Under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, is planning to include social auditing in its Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP) and Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) Schemes. Under both the schemes a number of housing and infrastructure projects are being undertaken across the country. The projects are large and a huge amount of money is spent on creating such infrastructure. A social audit pilot of BSUP and IHSDP schemes was conducted in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh and Ganj Basoda, Madhya Pradesh. To take forward the social audit process, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation has developed detailed Guidelines and Methodology for conducting Social Audits, a Handbook on Social Audit, a Training of Trainers’ (ToT) manual on social audit for BSUP & IHSDP schemes.

US introduces Public Online Information Act

2010-03-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

The US has recently introduced a bill, the Public Online Information Act (POIA) which will make it mandatory for all government departments to publish all publicly available information and data online. This includes information on the personal financial interests of high level government officials; reports of instances when executive branch travel is paid for by third-parties; reports disclosing lobbying activities by government contractors and grantees made in connection with winning a grant. If enacted, the POIA would make it mandatory for executive branch agencies to make all publicly available information online in a time bound and user friendly manner within three years of the bill being enacted. The bill also includes the setting up of a panel to bring together all branches of government create guidelines for information sharing. Click here to read more.

Assam to Guarantee Right to Health

2010-03-21T23:56:00.001-07:00

Sruti Bandyopadhyay

Assam became the first state in the country to introduce a bill guaranteeing the right to health and well-being. The state government tabled the Assam Public Health Bill, 2010, in the assembly on March 12, 2010. The bill, will be put to vote on March 31.

The bill proposes to make it compulsory for both government and private hospitals to provide free healthcare services and maintain appropriate protocol of treatment for the first 24 hours to an emergency patient. Whether the state has the capacity to fulfil these promises may be debatable, it is certainly true that Assam has a long way in achieving this target.

We highlight the positional matrix of Assam related to health sector in the following graphs. (Figures are taken from lok sabha website).

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Associate with Accountability Initiative

Launch of the Right to Education Portal

2010-03-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

A new Right to Education Portal has been launched by the Centre for Civil Society, as part of the RTE Coalition created to nurture a democratic space where each coalition partner and interested citizen will be able to strategize and contribute as to make universal elementary education a reality in India. The focus is on the Right to Education Act and its implementation at all levels. To access the portal click here

ADB Report: Ensure Transparency and Enforce Accountability

2010-03-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

"Implement priorities , monitor results, ensure transparency and enforce accountability" - that is the message of the Asia Development Bank's 2009 report entitled "India 2039: An Affluent Society in One Generation". The report talks about the need to rethink what the government does and how it does it. It specifically highlights seven facets of governance which are critical to the transformation of the Indian economy and society:

Create a smarter, more focused, agile and more credible government.
Retool the civil service to meet the needs of today and tommorrow.
Focus on the long term and open the public-private dialogue.
Support competitive markets and prevent capture of state organs.
Inculcate a code of self-discipline and ethical behaviour within the business community.
Implement priorities, monitor results, ensure transparency and enforce accountability.
Reverse the deterioration in political governance.

Its Our Money, Where's it Gone? Social Auditing in Kenya

2010-03-17T03:37:00.000-07:00

In Kenya, members of parliament receive approximately one million dollars per year to spend on development projects in their constituencies through a scheme called the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). However, with no system to hold them accountable, MPs spend these funds as they like and the CDF is plagued with corruption. Drawing on the experience of social audits in India, a civil society organisation, MUHURI is helping local slum dwelling communities in Mombasa investigate how their local CDF is being used. In a fascinating documentary "Its Our Money, Where's it Gone?", the International Budget Parternship presents the story of MUHURI and the transformative power of social audits in helping local communities hold the government to account.

RTI Act - to Amend or Not to Amend?

2010-03-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

Mandakini Devasher Surie

The RTI Act - to amend or not to amend? That is the question that has everyone talking. In a rare instance, Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh and Congress President, Sonia Gandhi are on opposite sides of the debate with the Prime Minister backing amendments to the Act in the face of strong opposition from activists. Under consideration are three major amendments which if pushed through will exempt frivolous and vexatious requests for information; discussions on policy decisions (read file notings) and the office of the Chief Justice of India. But the big question is why amend the RTI Act at all? The government’s take on the issue is simple – the amendments are necessary to improve the functioning of the law and to prevent its misuse by false or frivolous requesters. RTI activists on the other hand feel that the amendments have been designed to appease a recalcitrant bureaucracy and judiciary and will restrict the scope of the law.

Looking at just the first of the proposed amendments - frivolous and vexatious requests – it is not really clear what the government has in mind. What exactly is a frivolous or vexatious request for information? And more importantly who gets to decide and on what criteria? The fact of the matter is that most RTI requests are simple requests for information on government rules, procedures, budgets, expenditure, schemes and policies etc. Studies have shown the RTI Act is frequently used as a grievance redressal tool with people filing RTIs to find out why they have not received their ration cards, passports, election cards or other benefits. Most of this information should already be available and accessible to the public. But such requests are often considered vexatious, frivolous or voluminous simply because government departments do not have the necessary records management and information retrieval systems to deal with them.

For the small percentage of applications that are genuinely annoying, governments need to think of creating ways of dealing with them. In the UK, government departments get a fair number of ‘frivolous’ requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In 2006, the Hampshire Police received a request for a list of the names and addresses of eligible bachelors within the Hampshire constabulary. Taking the request in their stride, the office replied that they did in fact have 210 eligible bachelors on the rolls but sadly could not give out their personal information! In another case the Ministry of Defence got a request from an ex-sailor wanting to track down "an old Royal Navy recipe for sautéed kidneys and curried meatballs"!

In India, a creative solution is luckily close at hand and departments need look only as far as the RTI Act for help. Section 4 of the RTI Act requires departments to routinely publish 17 categories of information. This includes information on the functions and powers of an organisation, its decision making procedures, the names and contact details of officials and information on salaries, budgets, subsidy schemes etc. This information has to be updated regularly and published on the departments’ website and through other means. If implemented properly proactive disclosure gives people easy and regular access to government information which minimises the need for citizens to file formal RTI requests. This in turn helps reduce the volume of RTI requests received by government departments.

Unfortunately, departments across the country have a poor Section 4 compliance record. According to a recent study by the Right to Information Assessment and Analysis Group (RaaG), most departments are reporting only 30% of their Section 4 requirements. And even this information is incomplete and out of date. The problem is multifaceted. On the one hand there are a lot of departments that simply pay lip service to Section 4 and are insincere in their disclosure efforts. On the other hand there are departments who simply do not know what information they should be disclosing. The lack of awareness, training and capacity building of officials and departments on their proactive disclosure obligations is a major implementation hurdle. Poor records management is another. Archaic systems of records keeping, retrieval and archiving make it nearly impossible for Public Information Officers (PIOs) to piece together Section 4 information. Clearly, the need of the hour is stronger and more effective implementation of the RTI Act particularly Section 4 and not amendments.

In an effort to pacify RTI activists, the government has decided to shelve the amendments until consultations have been held with a range of stakeholders. But rather than seesawing on the issue, the government would do better to take on board the findings of the recent RaaG study which shows that more than frivolous and vexatious requests – weak implementation, lack of training and capacity building and poor records management are the major constrains faced by the governments in implementing the RTI Act today. In 2004, the UPA Government in its Common Minimum Programme promised to make the RTI Act “progressive, participatory and meaningful” - the current amendments fall far short of this promise.

Mandakini Devasher Surie is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative

Accountability Initiative Summer Internships 2010

2010-03-12T01:20:00.000-08:00

The Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi invites applications for a summer internship programme offering internship positions to interested MA and M.PHIL students. The internship programme affords an opportunity to students interested in undertaking policy research on the mechanisms of accountability in India’s governance institutions.

Case Studies on Accountability Internship: Recent years have seen significant changes in the design of social sector schemes and programmes. Flagship schemes such as the National Rural Health Mission, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme have inbuilt institutional mechanisms for accountability. But how are these mechanisms working on the ground? And are they effective? The Accountability Initiative wants to document the implementation of these new mechanisms through a series of case studies. Interns would be assigned a particular case study and required to undertake desk and field based research over a five to six week period.

Duration: The internship will be for five to six weeks from mid May – end June 2010.

Qualifications:

MA and M.PHIL students with a preference for those studying sociology, political science, history, economics, development studies, law and journalism;
Strong research and analytical skills;
Strong writing skills;
Interns must be willing to travel for up to two weeks of the internship;
Knowledge of vernacular languages (please specify in your application);

Compensation: Interns will be paid a stipend to cover their expenses.

Working at AI: The AI staff comprises a decided team of professionals with different areas of expertise including, economics, political science and development studies. The intern will be working out of the AI office. The case studies internship will provide interns with exposure to key issues in the debate on governance and accountability in India. The internship will also give interns the opportunity to develop their policy and field research skills.

Application Requirements: Please submit a resume and cover letter along with a writing sample and one reference to Mandakini Devasher at info@accountabilityindia.org. Please specify “Case Studies Internship” in the subject line of the email.

Applications Deadline: Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. The last date for submitting applications is 1 April 2010. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. For more information on the Accountability Initiative log on to our website: www.accountabilityindia.org.

Employment Programmes By Any Other Name

2010-03-11T03:18:00.000-08:00

Maitreyi Bordia Das

Is it an employment program? Is it an anti-poverty program? Is it a safety net? Is it a disaster management program, is it…..? Actually, it’s all of these. Public works programs are both good development and good politics. India’s National Employment Guarantee Scheme (now called the Mahatma Gandhi EGS) , despite its implementation challenges, is fast becoming the stuff international lore is made of.

Demographers talk of the diffusion effects of ideas of low fertility and other behaviors. And while South Asian countries have a history of public works programs as safety nets – a history that actually goes back to the Maurya Empire in circa 3rd century BC - the diffusion effect of NREGS across South Asia is apparent. This is as much due to the urgent employment needs in all countries in the region, as due to the fact that the Congress victory in India was purported to have hinged significantly on NREGS.

Consider some South Asian countries. Nepal has several public works programs based on both cash and food. In the remote and intractable hill districts (known by the omnibus category of the “Karnali Zone”) the government implements a food for work program, for which the World Food Program delivers food. There are similar programs in southern Nepal. Last summer I was in Sunsari - the part of the Tarai that was ravaged by the Kosi floods - and it was quite clear that the demand of public works programs far outweighs the supply.

Bangladesh similarly has a long history of both food and cash based public works programs. Its success in dealing with the chronic floods and cyclones is well known, but lesser known is the fact that public works programs have come to the rescue of households who have been hit by these disasters. Sri Lanka is considering similar interventions for its internally displaced persons.

In response to the food and fuel crisis about eighteen or so months ago, both Nepal and Bangladesh stepped up their coverage of employment generation programs. Bangladesh’s 100 Day Employment Program was evaluated independently by BRAC and the World Bank. The results have been very encouraging, showing reasonably good targeting of the poorest and efficient delivery of the program. Building on the experience of the 100 Day Employment Generation Program the Government of Bangladesh is now implementing the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest (EGPP), a cash-based workfare program.

But Bangladesh’s EGPP is very different from India’s NREGS. While both are based on a long history of implementing public works, yet the India program has a guarantee that entitles individuals to receive compensation if the work they seek is not provided within a certain period. The state has accepted and in fact co-opted an “entitlement approach” that was initially pushed hard by a formidable civil society movement. Citizen monitoring is built into the NREGS design and social audits are mandated twice a year even implementation uneven across states.

Moreover, NREGS is linked to a larger grassroots movement that questions the manner in which in India’s growth has affected the poorest and the high levels of malnutrition that persist despite overall reduction of poverty. A movement that is aided by judicial activism, citizen vigilance and an activist intelligentsia. Bangladesh, despite its renowned NGO movement does not have similar movements that demand accountability from the state.

Why is this?

Maitreyi Bordia Das is Senior Social Protection Specialist in the South Asia Human Development Department at the World Bank in Washington DC. This piece was cross posted from Maitreyi's Blog. Log on to read more of her blog posts.

UID and Service Delivery

2010-03-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

Yamini Aiyar

Responding to a Parliamentary Question in December 2009, the Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution revealed a worrying truth -since 2006, 5,300,000 bogus ration cards had been identified in West Bengal. Andhra Pradesh wasn’t far behind at 1,046,000 and Orissa was amongst the lowest at 250,000! It’s not just ration cards. The Janani Suraksha Yojna (JSY), a program that entitles pregnant women with a cash transfer if they undergo an institutional delivery, is another example. According to the rules, the entitlement is to be given at the time of delivery. A recent study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that a mere 8% of beneficiaries in Bihar received their money when discharged while Orissa topped the list at 20%. Given these inefficiencies, it’s no surprise that although social sector expenditures have increased by over 15 times in the last 15 years, India continues to perform poorly on every conceivable human development indicator.

An incentive structure that significantly compromises accountability to citizens lies at the heart of the problem, allowing inefficiency and corruption to proliferate. Take the instance of targeted subsidies. In 2009, the Government of India’s subsidy bill amounted to Rs. 1,11,000 crore. Yet, as the case of the bogus ration card shows, these subsidies rarely reach their target – India’s poorest. Inefficient targeting is, partly, a consequence of lack of transparency. Currently, there are no incentives to make information on beneficiaries public. This makes it impossible for citizens to cross-verify names and identify cases of duplicates and fraud, allowing corruption to foster. After all, in the absence of information, there are no questions. Where then are the incentives for government to be accountable?

Inefficient targeting is also a consequence of lack of voice. India’s poor have very few avenues to articulate their needs and hold the government to account. Moreover, when they face difficulties and harassment – be it submitting application forms or receiving payments on time – they have no means of redress. In such a scenario, the poor often find themselves excluded from systems and processes for accessing services.

Accountability requires that delivery processes are monitored to ensure that entitlements not just reach but reach on time. Currently, there are no incentives for monitoring processes and ensuring transparency in delivery. The government simply doesn’t have information on how money flows through the system, when and if it reaches the intended beneficiary. So, even if there are simple administrative bottlenecks that cause delays in processes, there simply is no way of identifying or fixing it. How then, can such a system be expected to deliver?

The Unique Identification Number (UID), by virtue of its ability to inject transparency in the system, has the potential to address some of these accountability failures. First, the fool-proof identification system can significantly reduce targeting inefficiencies. If the UID were to be linked with processes for distributing ration cards, for instance, it could weed out instances of fraud. More important, the UID has the potential to create a data platform which could link multiple data sets together making it feasible to cross-verify data and monitor progress. If the data set on ration cards, for instance, were linked to the data set of BPL beneficiaries, it would be feasible to cross-verify ration card applications and identify fake and duplicate names at the click of a button. This data, if placed in the public domain can significantly enhance transparency and empower citizens with a tool to hold government accountable.

But we must remember that the UID is merely an enabler. There are many things the UID can’t do. It can’t ensure that government departments work together to utilize the potential of a common data platform, it can’t ensure that departments monitor and track progress and can’t ensure that data is places in the public domain. Ultimately, effective service delivery requires effective implementers. And this means significantly altering the incentives they face so that implementers are accountable to citizens. It is only if administrative reforms go hand in hand with the UID, that there will be a chance that all the money spent in social sectors will result in improving India’s human development indicators.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director of the Accountability Initiative.

SC Moves Appeal to Itself on RTI

2010-03-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

In an unprecedented move the Supreme Court of India has moved an appeal before itself. The appeal has been filed against the landmark decision of the Delhi High Court in January which brought the office of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) under the purview of the Right to Information Act 2005. The appeal is set against the backdrop of debates within government about amending the Right to Information Act 2005 to exclude frivolous requests for information, discussions on policy matters and also the office of the Chief Justice.

India’s Anti-Corruption Agency in the Global Integrity Report 2009

2010-03-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

Madhumita D. Mitra

The Global Integrity (GI) Report 2009 rates India as moderately capable of handling the “cancer” of corruption (70 on 100). With its legal framework scoring 86 (strong), India’s actual implementation of accountability mechanisms and transparency is only 55 (very weak) leaving a very large implementation gap of 31. Unlike other corruption indices, the GI Index does not measure corruption, but using responses to 300+ Integrity Indicators, it assesses “the access that citizens and businesses have to a country's government, their ability to monitor its behaviour, and their ability to seek redress and advocate for improved governance” as a measure of a government’s ability to prevent abuse of power and promote public integrity.

The Anti-corruption and Rule of Law category of the Indicators shows that India’s strong anti-corruption laws (score: 89) are made ineffective by a weak anti-corruption agency (score: 69), weak rule of law (score: 67) and very weak law enforcement (score: 58).

More than a decade after the Supreme Court (SC) gave extensive directions to the government in the landmark Vineet Narain case to secure the independence of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate, the governments in power continue to manipulate the CBI and the legal processes instead of consistently upholding the rule of law.

Why anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) fail has been well documented through the experiences of many countries. Fear of consequences that lead to loss of independence and autonomy, unrealistic expectations when fighting deeply entrenched systemic corruption, excessive reliance on enforcement after the event, lack of public involvement, insufficient accountability, are some of the reasons of failure frequently cited.

These causes may well apply to ACAs in India because the flaws are largely institutional. Independence and autonomy of the CBI is a myth. The CBI still must get permission from the government to register cases (under certain situations) and sanction for prosecution of corruption cases against public servants. The Criminal Procedure Code makes it essential for the CBI to take permission of the government before it can appeal to a higher court against a case lost in the trial court. Senior level police officers in the CBI belong to the Indian Police Service who owe their allegiance to the government who appoint and can remove them from service.

Despite its claim to a “three pronged strategy for prevention, surveillance and detection as well as deterrent and punitive action” to contain corruption, the preventive vigilance functions of the ACAs (which in the Central government is a multi-agency combined force of the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), CBI and Chief Vigilance Officers (CVOs) is virtually non-existent. Asset declaration religiously gathered and filed by the government departments is a good example. Low registration of cases and low conviction rates point as much to poor vigilance as to ineffective investigation and prosecution.

The SC perhaps tried to create a powerful single agency by its 1997 judgment endowing the CVC with powers of supervision and control over vigilance administration and corruption cases and also over CBI investigations. As a statutory body answerable to the Parliament, the SC directives were intended to insulate appointments, investigation and prosecution from government control, read the DoPT. This experiment with independence has nearly failed.

But the single-agency approach appears to have worked for South Korea, which the GI Report rates as the most capable of all the 35 countries assessed to fight corruption. It not only scores full marks for its AC law, but its ACA is rated as strong (an Independent Commission that reports to the President), as is its law enforcement. A powerful centralized agency that has also worked excellently is Hong Kong’s (not part of the GI Report) Independent Commission Against Corruption whose mission is to prosecute the “big fish” in combination with encouraging citizen involvement in oversight and reporting of corruption cases.

In attempting to create a single agency system, was the SC relying far too much on independence and autonomy? Interestingly, studies show that accountability and formal independence, though desirable, are overrated because they can be so easily subverted by political factors. This seems to be borne out by the GI data which show that ACAs of a large number of countries like India, Algeria, Columbia, Venezuela, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Nepal, which are in law protected from political interference, fare poorly when it comes to actual practice. The United States on the other hand, without any formal law, scores highly in insulating its ACA.

Effective laws, procedures, courts system, and financial system governance have been found to make ACAs successful. The experiences of Hong Kong have shown that public and civil society participation to eradicate corruption are effective strategies. As are freedom of information laws.

Collecting and publishing performance data is sine qua non for analysing performance of ACAs. Unfortunately, so little of it is available on India. For example, once too often CBI announces countrywide raids to catch corrupt public officials, but there is rarely any information on the follow-up. Given the low levels of cases which actually to go trial, it is doubtful that CBI puts its raid data to effective use. Looking inwards is the only way India’s ACAs can shed their public image that they exist only to shield the corrupt.

Madhumita D. Mitra is a Consultant with Corporate Lexport, a law firm based in New Delhi

The Curious Case of Unspent Funds

2010-03-07T21:37:00.000-08:00

Avani Kapur

Every year the week before and after the budget, debates across all media channels and civil society tend to focus on “allocations” – how much money has been allocated for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan? What is the jump in allocations for rural development? How much is health getting? But amidst the outcry on allocations, the most important question that seems to get lost is, how was last year’s money actually spent?

A week before the budget was announced, newspapers carried a startling finding by the Comptroller and Auditor General - that “Rs. 1 lakh crore budget funds go unspent every year”. But in the midst of the attention given to allocations, the story and along with it the attention towards unspent funds, somehow disappeared.

According to the CAG report, in 2007-08, under 97 grants of civil ministries, there was an unspent provision of Rs. 1,08,000 crore. The report was based on the findings by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) based on the accounts of 2005-2007. The following table from the Times of India (TOI) summarizes some of the CAG findings. For those interested in going deeper into the report, click here

Unspent funds are indeed a curious thing and broadly there are a few things that continue to perplex me and may be some of the keys to this mystery.

First, The Flow of Funds:
In recent years, there has been a paradigm shift in the Union Government’s strategy for implementation of flagship programmes and other centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) for poverty alleviation, health care, education, employment, sanitation etc. Most of these schemes were initially implemented on a cost sharing basis with transfer of central share to state government. Now, the Union Government has started transferring their share directly to state/district level autonomous bodies, societies and ngos for implementation of CSS without devolving funds through the state government accounts.

As the CAG report states, “For the year 2007-08, Union Government made a provision for transfer of central plan assistance of Rs. 51259.85 crore (as per revised estimates) directly to these state/district level societies…. Expenditure in the accounts of these implementing agencies is kept outside Government accounts not readily ascertainable.” So basically, we have no real idea about the amount of actual expenditures being undertaken and even the expenditure reflected in the accounts is to that extent, overstated. How will we develop proper mechanisms to monitor these flows of funds? If “society” funds are outside the ambit of the government accounts – where is the transparency?

Second, Timings of disbursements:
Why is it that funds continue to be released in the last few quarters of the financial years? In education, 63% of SSA funds were spent in the second half of FY 2008-09. Even the CAG report noted delays in funds in FY 2007-08. The table below summarizes some of their findings:

What is worse is that we don’t seem to have learnt from past mistakes. According to the TOI report, even the Union Government’s monthly accounts for the current year, reveal that some of the ministries’ expenditure till December 2009 was not more than 50% of the annual budget, though only 3 months remained for the end of the financial year. All this is despite the fact that on the Public Accounts Committee’s recommendations, the Ministry of Finance issued instructions to all Ministries/Departments to restrict their expenditure during the last quarter of the financial year to 33% of the budget amount.

Finally, Trends:
Why is it that some states spend more than others? For example in FY 2007-08, while Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh spent over 90% of the allocated funds for SSA, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar spent 57% and 42% respectively. Similarly in health, in FY 2008-09, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh spent more than 90% in FY 2008-09, while Bihar spent 66% and Orissa spent 75% of total funds available.

And finally, is it easier to incur expenditure on some items more than others? or why do some expenditure items get spent more than others? Why do untied grants in National Rural Health Mission hardly get spent (Bihar spent 11% and Himachal Pradesh spent 37% of untied funds available). In education, why is it that items like infrastructure and teacher salaries get spent more than teacher trainings or innovation grants?

I don’t have the answers, but it’s time we at least start asking the questions!

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator, PAISA Project at Accountability Initiative

CDF Policy Briefs on Centrally Sponsored Schemes

2010-03-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

The Centre for Development Finance has released a series of policy briefs that analyse and evaluate the performance of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS). The first four scheme briefs look at the performance of Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mid Day Meal (MDM) scheme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). The briefs provide a thematic insight in to the issues of early child care and development, school feeding, sustainable livelihood generation, and universalising primary education, respectively. Click here to download the briefs.

Budget 2010 - A Preliminary Assessment

2010-03-03T03:53:00.000-08:00

Anit Mukherjee

The much-anticipated budget for the financial year 2010-11 can be termed as a consolidation budget. It needs to be looked upon in the context of a rebounding economy and relatively stable political environment but with high inflationary pressures and the need to significantly alter the structure of government’s income and expenditure. The budget also has to be seen in the context of the recommendations of the Thirteenth Finance Commission (FC-XIII). Being a statutory commission, the recommendations are in a large part binding upon the government.

The road map for fiscal consolidation as enunciated by both the budget and the FC-XIII report are very clear. The fiscal deficit has to be reduced progressively, and the revenue deficit has to be eliminated altogether. Moreover, accounting tricks of previous years such as oil bonds and fertilizer subsidies being kept outside the deficit calculation has to be done away with. In both these areas, Budget 2010 makes a good beginning by projecting a fiscal deficit of 5.5 percent for FY 2010-11. Reduction in the fiscal deficit essentially means that the government would be borrowing less from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), therefore leaving a greater share of credit for private sector. This also means that the pressure on interest rates is reduced, since the government has first charge on the available credit from RBI. Monetary policy can be calibrated to tackle inflation, now that the government has signaled its intent on a rollback of the stimulus measures.

This brings us to the most important policy direction contained in Budget 2010 – a structural change in the way government earns its income and spends the money especially in infrastructure and social sectors such as education, health and rural development. On the income side, the next year promises to be the ‘Big-bang’ year if both the Direct Tax Code (DTC) and the Goods and Service Tax (GST) are introduced from April 1, 2011. The Finance Minister is clear about the former, but the latter depends whether the States can agree to a unified GST rate and the consequent compensation for the tax revenues foregone. Given the fact that the GST deliberations have progressed substantially, the remaining issues may be more technical – constitutional amendments, GST database and the mode of revenue sharing. If both the DTC and GST come into force from 2011 as expected, the revenue position of the Central government is expected to improve significantly over the second half of the government’s mandate. The high-point of Budget 2010 – the cut in personal income tax – is to lay the groundwork for the implementation of DTC from next year. This was also made possible by the fact that all the pay arrears on account of the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission was already factored into the previous budget.

On the indirect taxes, the increase in central excise duties from 8 to 10 percent reflects a calibrated exit from the stimulus package announced over the last 18 months. The re-imposition of customs duties on petroleum may signify that price decontrol of petrol and diesel may come later rather than sooner. However, silence on kerosene and LPG is a hint towards a change of the pattern of subsidies that may come later in the year as per the recommendations on this topic presented to the government, the latest being the Kirit Parikh Committee Report.
As noted earlier, the government expects the GST to be rolled out from April 2011. To that effect, for the first time the central excise and service tax rates have been aligned at the same rate of 10 percent. If the compensation to the states on account of their revenue loss has to be kept at reasonable limits, then a 16-18 percent GST rate could be the consensus. In that sense, this budget consolidates the fiscal position of the Central government and puts a Central GST rate of 10 percent as an acceptable proposition. It is now up to the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers to hammer out an agreement before the next budget.

The Economic Survey which was released the day before the budget is a welcome departure from the uninspiring document that it usually is. The major policy guidelines are enunciated in Chapter 2 of the Survey where the most interesting discussion is about subsidies. It has been acknowledged in many fora that subsidies are a huge burden on the government exchequer, and limit the flexibility of the ruling dispensation to reduce them mainly due to populist political pressures. The total subsidy bill on three major items – food, fuel and fertilizer – is estimated to be nearly 1.5 lakh crore, or nearly 3 percent of GDP. On the other hand, parties on the Left argue that this is necessary to protect the interests of the poor, which makes them vulnerable to price shocks and leaves them without a social safety net.

There is a point to both the arguments, but until now the middle ground has been elusive. The budget has signaled that the answer to this dilemma lies in better targeting of subsidies for the poor, and in the larger national interest. The decontrol of nutrient based fertilizer prices (and the increase in urea) is the first step – already the government projects significant savings from this measure in this year’s budget. Against the backdrop of the Food Security Bill to be tabled later this year, the budget hints that food subsidy and buffer stock management will undergo systemic changes by leveraging new IT initiatives such as the Unique ID Number (UID) and the conversion of the food subsidy into a cash transfer after identification of the beneficiaries. The kerosene and LPG subsidies may actually be the first ones to be converted into this system. Over the next two years, therefore, a lot of emphasis would be on prudent management of government expenditure (especially on the subsidies front) and in improving targeting of the beneficiaries. If duplicate ration cards are weeded out from the system, everybody will gain. If kerosene is not used to adulterate diesel, fuel consumption and fuel emissions will both go down. The challenge is to change the incentives, enforce the rules and track the outcome.

This year’s budget does not break new ground. Rather, it is an effort to level the playing field in many areas. The question is how far the intent will be translated into action. The government’s record on inflation management has been ineffective until now, the disinvestment process is running into rough weather and monetary tightening is on the cards. The year ahead will be both challenging and exciting in different ways. We can then look forward to a ‘Big Bang’ 2011 budget.

Anit Mukherjee is with the National Institute of Public Finance Policy (NIPFP).

Global Integrity Report 2009 Launched

2010-03-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

The Global Integrity Report 2009 has recently been launched. The Report is a tool for understanding governance and anti-corruption mechanisms at the national level.The Global Integrity Report mobilizes a highly qualified network of in-country researchers and journalists to generate quantitative data and qualitative reporting on the health of a country's anti-corruption framework. Each country assessment contained in the Global Integrity Report comprises two core elements: a qualitative Reporter's Notebook and a quantitative Integrity Indicators scorecard, the data from which is aggregated and used to generate the cross-country Global Integrity Index. To know more about the report click here.

To Improve Policy Effectiveness

2010-03-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

Sruti Bandyopadhyay

Voters elect governments to solve social problems. Governments design and implement a huge array of programs and allocate huge sum of money every year to ensure the public good s. A sizable literature has developed suggesting that problems in program implementation are a major source of poor government performance, ranging from inadequate coordination between agencies and levels of government to front-line workers who disagree with the program and implement it with less than total enthusiasm.
But do you think, the improved policy effectiveness can be brought in by setting-up of an “Independent Evaluation Office to undertake impartial and objective assessments of the various public programmes and improve the effectiveness of the public interventions”. This year’s budget speech mentions, “It has been decided that it would be an independent entity under a Governing board chaired by the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission. The IEO would evaluate the impact of flagship programmes and place the findings in the public domain. It would be funded by the Planning Commission.”
Surprisingly there has been no mention to the final step of the implementation chain: explanations of why the state or block level officials do or do not “comply” with these policy objective – meaning that why don’t they behave in ways that are consistent with the objectives of the policy.
Program “officials” frequently fail to act in the way that program designers intended and wanted, even when it appears to be in their self-interest to do so. Contrary to common perception, the single biggest crisis facing the state officials is not corruption, it is lack of capacity. This is true at virtually all levels of government. The officials do not often even have the full statistical base in some of the most vital areas of our well being, from health to urban economies, to be able to make intelligent interventions.
The regulatory demands of the modern economy and the challenges of governance require substantial planning and expenditure towards capacity building at the state and subsequently at the ULB and Panchayat level. It is critical to listen to both what they say and what they do. Every department should be allocated a stipulated some of money to map the challenges faced by each department and then they should make that shortcomings public. This resource mapping will help the government to learn quickly what mistakes of omission or commission (or both) policymakers have made and help in correcting those mistakes.
For any government interested in thinking seriously about effective implementation should begin the conversion by ensuring state’s capability to do all that is expected of it.
Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative

Financial Inclusion: Please Do Not Forget Our Urban Poor!

2010-02-24T21:46:00.000-08:00

Premila Nazareth Satyanand

Respected Pranab da,
While the nation lauds the Government’s single-minded drive to take banking to rural doorsteps, the Finance Ministry and the RBI are sadly neglecting a key constituency: the impoverished millions on the doorsteps of urban banks, denied access for lack of ‘papers’. Despite the Government’s clarion call to financial inclusion, my friends and I continue to find it difficult - if not impossible - to open accounts for our cooks, maids, drivers and gardeners.

Breaking the Gordian knot of identity and address documents
Partly responsible are the Reserve Bank of India’s 2002 ‘Know Your Customer’ rules which require banks to check the background of prospective applicants to guard against money laundering and terrorism financing. Applicants must prove both identity and residence through one of six documents. Passport, PAN card, voter’s card, driving license, identity card, or letter from a recognised public authority/ public servant in the first case; and telephone or electricity bill, ration card, bank account statement, or letter from employer/recognised public authority in the second.

Predominantly rural migrants, most of our urban poor do not have the correct combination of identity and address documents necessary to open accounts. The key sticking point is ‘local address’. This I learnt when I tried to open an account for Mahesh, the young Uttaranchali who lives and works in my house. He has a high-school I.D., a ration card, and a voter’s card (three KYC- approved identity documents), but these were insufficient to prove his bona fide. For, they display an Uttaranchal, not a Delhi address. Sona, our Maharashtrian ayah has no documentation at all, so hers was a ‘shut-before-opening’ case.

Recognising this Gordian knot, the RBI relaxed the documentary requirements for small deposit (or ‘no frills’) accounts with a total balance of Rs 50,000. In its Master ‘Know Your Customer’ Circular of July 2009, it ruled that a written introduction/certification from an account holder was sufficient to open such accounts, provided the account was “over six months old and showed satisfactory transactions.”

Continuing violations by urban banks
Yet, eight months later, in direct contravention of this ruling, banks across the country continue to refuse to honour letters of introduction from account-holders/employers as sufficient evidence of identity and address. Bank branches have either not been properly briefed about the July 2009 relaxations, or they are using the 2002 KYC obligations as a convenient smoke-screen to duck opening un-remunerative accounts for the poor. No surprise then that just 2% of our over 33 million ‘no frills’ accounts are urban, as the Skoch Institute estimates. In real terms, this is just 66,000 accounts. Minuscule in the context of India’s urban poor population of between 80 million to 190 million. We could immediately bring much of this population into the formal banking system, merely by pressuring the banks to adhere to the RBI’s July 2009 relaxations. The national drive to financially empower the poor must thus strategically invest in tracking and pushing inclusion in urban areas.

It is essential we start immediately. UNDP’s ‘Indian Urban Poverty Report 2009’ shows India’s urban population doubling from 286 million to 575 million by 2030. More worryingly, it projects continued growth in our urban poor population, due to expanding rural in-migration and lack of public services. Continuing exclusion from formal banking services will only aggravate this unfortunate trend. Bringing the poor into the banks is also essential to establishing their identity within other formal skills and livelihood systems.

The banks’ need for caution is understandable. But our system’s dogged insistence on ‘local address’ is misplaced, given an expanding ATM network and growing geographic mobility. In any case, most small depositors use their accounts primarily to store and save money. Thus, should they vanish with all their money, it is theirs and nobody else’s. Moreover, small deposits do not easily lend themselves to the kinds of scam seen on stock markets.

Domestic workers: the low-hanging fruit
India’s 95-100 million domestic workers present the lowest-hanging fruit in the urban financial inclusion campaign. For, they all have close, organic links to households already within the banking system, significantly reducing the risk for banks. Since 90% of these workers are women, the implications for social empowerment are significant.

This category of worker is also likely to make larger and more regular deposits than most urban and rural poor counterparts. In bigger cities, average domestic worker salaries range from 3,500 to Rs 5,000 and average monthly savings from Rs 500-Rs 1,000. Employers would be happy to pay salaries via recurring monthly deposits. Account holders are likely to make one or two withdrawals a month. Urban ‘no frills’ accounts are thus likely to be continually active, cutting to the heart of the banks’ complaint that only 11% of the nearly 33 million rural accounts are.

The Government must thus do some quick and clever thinking on how to incentivise our banks to, first, admit and, then, effectively serve our urban poor. To quote S.S.Tarapore, “No individual should be denied the right to open an account.” Some ‘carrot’ and some ‘stick’ might be required. But, judging from India’s telecom experience, energetic attention to enforcing banks’ urban ‘universal service obligation’ is more likely to trigger a low-cost system of ‘mass banking’, than crores of Budget spending on technology platforms and rural banking infrastructure.

Premila Nazareth Satyanand is an independent policy analyst.

AI Budget Briefs Series 2010

2010-02-16T03:18:00.000-08:00

The Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research is pleased to launch its Budget Briefs Series 2010. The 8 briefs in this series examine trends in social sector allocations and expenditures in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Mid-day Meal Scheme, National Rural Health Mission, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Water and Sanitation, Food Subsidy, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna.

Finding a Voice: Community Television Initiative

2010-02-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

Sruti Bandyopadhyay

Some people used to argue that elections are THE best instruments of accountability. But events have overtaken the idea and now there are many who are focusing on the limitations of election, mainly, if you have an uninformed citizenry.

There is another dimension to it. While in democracies, elections provide an incentive for politicians to perform, governments are not likely to respond as enthusiastically to those who are unlikely or marginalized voters, no matter whether their plight has been well covered or not. So how do you turn uninformed citizenry or marginalized voters into active citizens?...In short, by providing evidence based information.

On the face of it, getting critical news and information out to citizens should be an easier and easier task in today’s digitalized, networked and hand-held world. But most media—across regions and on any platform: print, radio, TV or online—aren’t interested in serving the public good, because there is no finance to that public-good role.

This then presents an opportunity for the development community. To get information out to the public, to educate the public about who to trust and how to evaluate information sources, research organization needs to use newer tools. But, where is the tool?

Community Television initiative can be considered as one such dynamic tool. Access to television in remote Indian villages has changed substantially in the past few years. And, community television will have many advantages over print media. Programmes, nearly always in the local languages would deal with local issues involving ordinary people so that villagers (even illiterate ones) and town people understand what they are about. The volunteer appointed by a civil society can organize a debate once in a week on localize issues, which in turn would become topics for programmes on the community television. For example, Byrraju Foundation in collaboration with UNESCO has set up one such initiative -Ankuram community TV.

This innovation combines a TV studio and the existing wifi network with a local cable TV facility enabling people to access the services and programmes right in their homes. This technological and social innovation is being piloted in three villages (Cherukumilli, Juvvalapalem & I-Bhimavaram) in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh and the local programmes reach about 69 villages across the district through the cable network.

If community TV network gains momentum in India, then rural India should perhaps call the TV the Empowerment Box instead of the Idiot Box.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative

AI Budget Series: Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water

2010-02-11T22:10:00.000-08:00

In the last of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure on rural drinking water and sanitation . For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article -Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water:Mere Infrastructure Won't Solve Problems

AI Budget Series: National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)

2010-02-10T20:44:00.000-08:00

In the third of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article - Health Economics: Weak Implementation Ailing Health Care Plans

AI Budget Series: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)

2010-02-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

In the second of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article - Education Economics:Need to relearn lessons on SSA fund flows.

AI Budget Series: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)

2010-02-09T00:41:00.000-08:00

In the first of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article - Rural Economics: How taxpayers' money is (or isn't) being spent.

Food Subsidy and the Budget: Where did your money go?

2010-02-07T22:48:00.000-08:00

Is the food subsidy helping the poor in India? How much money has been allocated, how much is being spent? and are these allocations efficient? Accountability Initiative's data on food subsidy shows where your money is going.

Hindol Sengupta, Bloomberg UTV news discusses food subsidy and the budget with with Dr Swaminathan and others on "Everybody's Business: Where Did Your Money Go?".

The Right to Information - Open to Interpretation

2010-02-07T20:50:00.000-08:00

Mandakini Devasher Surie

Whether it is the debate over access to judges’ assets or individual income tax returns, the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) gets people talking. As a developing area of legislation with few legal precedents, the RTI is open to interpretation. I discovered this first hand a few weeks ago at the Central Information Commission (CIC). Colleagues and I were representing an RTI applicant in a string of second appeal hearings. The applicant had filed an information request with the Delhi Police to get access to statistical information on the number of applications and appeals received by them, as well as copies of RTI applications and appeals from October 2005 – April 2008. The data was being collected as part of the all-India study on the RTI Act being carried out by the Right to Information Assessment and Analysis Group (RaaG). While most of the departments had responded with some statistical information, they were unwilling to part with copies of RTI applications and appeals. The PIOs stated that copies could not be given because i) the information requested would have to be compiled and would divert the resources of the department [Sec 7(9)], and ii) RTI applications and appeals contained sensitive information the disclosure of which would likely to endanger the life and physical safety of a person [Sec 8(1)(g)], impede the process of investigation [8(1)(h)] and invade the privacy of the individual [8(1) (j)].

Early on the hearings, it became evident that none of the PIOs had actually thought about the exemptions they had used. This was particularly evident in the use of privacy and danger to life and physical safety exemptions to deny access to copies of RTI applications and appeals. Bear in mind that RTI applications and appeals only contain the name and addresses of applicants and therefore cannot be considered to contain “personal” information. Moreover copies of these can be downloaded easily from the Delhi Government and the CIC websites. One PIO hilariously argued that providing access to copies of RTIs constituted an infringement of copyright [Sec 8(1) (e)]! A decision on our appeal is still pending, but to my mind the hearings brought to light a lot of interesting questions. For instance, what constitutes a “voluminous” request for information – is it the number of questions or the number of pages? Who decides? Similarly, how do we define a “disproportionate diversion” of resources? Can it be measured? And are RTI applications and appeals personal? What exactly is “personal information?

These are questions that PIOs, Appellate Authorities and Information Commissioners grapple with every day with little guidance. There are broader issues as well – of ensuring that citizens make responsible use of the law, that departments have the human capacity to process and handle information requests and lastly that the pressure for information disclosure is not entirely at the cost of the discretion of officials or vice versa. The balance is a fine one.

Thus, even as CIC issues landmark decisions it also needs to bold decisions on the everyday but often more “tricky” points of the law. Failure to develop clear and concrete guidelines on how to interpret the law or fence sitting on the application of exemptions or on the interpretation of other clauses of the law, will not help. In the absence of clear guidance, the law is likely to become an unholy mess of awry interpretations. The CIC would do well to follow the example of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office which offers detailed guidance on interpreting different clauses of the UK Freedom of Information Act.

Mandakini Devasher Surie is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.

Budget 2010 - Great Expectations

2010-02-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

Anit Mukherjee

It is the Budget season again. Every year, the nation looks forward to the two-hour speech of the Finance Minister where he lays out the government’s housekeeping statement – revenues collected, expenditures incurred and the plan for the next year. The budget means different things to different people. Some focus on the tax rates on income, goods and services, while others look at how much the government is spending and on what. But the bigger question is: what does the budget signify for the nation?

Every budget has a context and a theme. Budget 2009 was in the backdrop of the financial crisis, the general elections and the post-election policy direction. The theme was crisis-management - how to pull the economy out of the downturn trumped the concerns over the fiscal deficit which was pegged at 6.8 percent of GDP, the highest since 2003-04. The bold decisions were put off until later.

It is in this backdrop that Budget 2010 will be presented. The economy has come out of the downturn pretty much unscathed compared to other countries in the developed world. So the theme this year would be about reigning in the deficit, rationalizing expenditure and focusing on priority sectors. This is exactly what any family would do after a year of profligacy to get its finances in order.

So what can we expect from the Finance Minister this year? First of all, it would be a difficult balancing act – the need to raise more resources through higher taxes vis-à-vis derailing the growth rebound. The second is to ensure sustained and increased financing for core sectors – education, health, rural and urban infrastructure. Third, the budget needs to take into account the recommendations of the Thirteenth Finance Commission which will be tabled in this session of the Parliament.

The most significant talking point may be the allocation for education. The operationalization of the Right to Education (RTE) means that substantially more allocation would be needed in the Centre’s budget. At the same time, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) would pick up steam, and allocation for higher education will continue to increase. On the other hand, this budget is expected to maintain the status quo on NRHM, NREGS and Bharat Nirman.

There is one thing that certainly this budget would not do – talk about how to improve the efficiency and accountability of expenditure. Everyone in government loves to spend, nobody likes to be asked “What exactly did you do with the money”? The great expectations of transparency, accountability and independent monitoring outlined in the President’s address last year seems to have been conveniently forgotten, and the government seems to spend the people’s money as it likes. This needs to change – the sooner, the better.

Anit Mukherjee is with the National Institute of Public Finance Policy (NIPFP).

Where did your money go? Budget 2010 and Education

2010-02-04T02:22:00.000-08:00

Madhav Chavan, Founder, Pratham and Anit Mukherjee, National Institute of Public Finance Policy talk to Bloomberg UTV news about the upcoming budget and the need for the government to spend more on education.

Accountability and the budget: Tracking where your money goes

2010-02-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

Yamini Aiyar, Director, Accountability Initiative talks to Mint about the upcoming budget and how taxpayers money is (or isn’t) being spent, how budget allocations are made, and how public sector expenditure can ultimately be put to better use. To read the interview click here.

Rights Based Entitlements in India

2010-01-29T01:14:00.000-08:00

Mandakini Devasher Surie

In recent years, rights based people's movements have had considerable success in gaining legal recognition for basic rights and services such as the right to education, food information etc. According to Pratap Bhanu Mehta, "The rights movement rose against the backdrop of state failure. What people are groping for is different instruments through which the Constitution's objectives may be realized.” Summarised below are some examples of basic rights that have found legal recognition in recent years:

Right to Education
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (Right to Education Act (RTE) in short) was passed by Parliament in August 2009. The Act gives effect to the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act 2002 which requires the State to provide free and compulsory elementary education to all children. The RTE Act guarantees free and compulsory elementary education for all children between the ages of 6-14 years. Government schools are required to provide free and compulsory education to all children admitted while aided schools are required to provide free and compulsory to a minimum of 25% of enrolled children. Under the Act no child shall be held back in class, expelled or required to pass a board exam until his/her elementary education is complete. The physical punishment and mental harassment of children is prohibited under the law. The Act also makes provisions for schools (government and unaided) to admit at least 25% of students from SCs, STs, low-income and other disadvantaged groups. The Government has recently framed model rules for implementation of the law.

Right to Food
To combat the challenges of hunger, starvation, malnutrition and food insecurity, the Congress Party in its 2009 Election Manifesto promised to enact a “National Food Security Act” to provide 25 Kgs of rice or wheat at Rs 3 per Kg for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. However, the draft “National Food Security Bill” has been extensively criticised - in particular for limiting the list of beneficiaries to BPL households. Right to food campaigners and activists are demanding a more comprehensive “Food Entitlements Act” which goes beyond the limited provision of 25 kgs of grain at Rs 3 Kg for BPL households. Key provisions of the proposed “Food Entitlements Act” include: a universal Public Distribution System (providing at least 35 Kgs of grain per family); special food entitlements for destitute households (including an expanded Antyodaya programme); consolidation of all entitlements created by recent Supreme Court orders (e.g. cooked mid-day meals in primary schools and universalisation of ICDS) etc.

Forest Rights Act
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 was passed by Parliament in December 2006. However the Act was officially notified into force a year later in December 2007, while the Rules for the Act were notified on 1 January 2008. The Forest Rights Act (as it is popularly known) recognizes and secures the forest rights of Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwelling communities and provides them with a voice in forest conservation issues. Specifically, the Act recognises three kinds of rights: (i) land rights over land that has been occupied for cultivation or residence (ii) usage rights over forest produce and traditional knowledge and (iii) legal rights to protect and conserve forests. The Forest Rights Act has been criticized by conservationists who feel the law will hasten the depletion of India’s forest cover and wildlife. There are also serious concerns about how the Act is being implemented in different parts of the country.

Right to Information
The Right to Information Act 2005 (RTI Act) was passed in 2005 following a decade long grassroots and civil society campaign. Notably, even before its enactment into law, the right to information had been recognized by the Supreme Court of India as a fundamental part of the right to freedom of speech and right to life (Articles 19 and 21 respectively) of the Constitution. The RTI Act sets out practical regime for citizens in India to access information held by the government. It guarantees a legally enforceable right to information to all citizens places a corresponding duty on the government to provide information proactively and on request. The Act covers the whole country (with the exception of Jammu and Kashmir) and extends to all branches of the government. The legislation spells out a detailed administrative structure to facilitate citizen’s access to information including provisions for the setting up of Information Commissions to handle appeals and complaints.

JNNURM - A Work in Progress

2010-01-27T00:25:00.000-08:00

Avani Kapur

As India completes 60 years of being a republic, one can’t help but look around at our towns and cities and wonder where we are heading. And as a resident of Delhi, the first thought that comes to my mind (maybe due to the infinite signs that plague Delhi roads in anticipation of the Commonwealth Games) is that we today are a “work in progress”. Open drains, pot holes, roads dug up, lakhs of homeless people struggling to stay warm in the extreme cold are all constant reminders that urban chaos is becoming a way of life. And as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently noted, “our cities and towns are not an acceptable face of a rapidly modernizing and developing economy”.

This is despite the fact that on December 3rd, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), India’s comprehensive flagship programme for urban development completed four of its intended seven year tenure. This is no small amount of money –a total of Rs. 103,462 crores has been approved of which the centre has committed assistance of Rs. 55,625 crores, provided states and local bodies give their prescribed share of funds. However, the programme is running at a very slow pace, with not even a quarter of the projects completed and less than a third having got off the ground. To give a simple example, 14.59 lakh houses for the poor have been approved under the mission. However, so far only 1.80 lakh houses have been completed and another 4.38 lakh homes are under construction.

As more and more money gets pumped into the scheme (including a $1-billion loan which is currently being approved from the World Bank), serious questions need to be asked about state capacity and the ability of states to effectively utilize the money for urban development.

In particular, I would like to highlight three points that need careful attention as we move forward with JNNURM.

• First, Funds.
JNNURM works on a cost sharing model with centre, states and local bodies all having a prescribed share. Till March 2009, while states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu released over 70 percent of their share of funds, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab released just over half and Haryana only released 22 percent. Urban local bodies on their part too, have fallen behind. While Greater Mumbai and Hyderabad released over 80 percent of their funds, Chennai and Kolkata released only 24 and 18 percent respectively. Inability to release funds in time has resulted in significant delays to infrastructural projects. In Kanpur for instance, the repair work in the city, with a Rs 96.23 crore project allocated under JNNURM, is lying incomplete for the last three months due to a lack of funds. Reason: sanctioned funds from the state have already been used elsewhere.

• Second, Citizen Participation.
First principles of public accountability require that expenditures must adequately reflect citizens’ interests and priorities. Interestingly, citizen participation is embedded in the overall design of the JNNURM Mission. One mechanism is the creation of the National Technical Advisory Group, made of members of civil society. In addition, a Community Participation Fund (CPF) was also launched in September 2007 - to catalyze community participation by supporting the building of community assets. Moreover, states are mandated to enact community participation laws. However, while there is provision for about 1000 community projects under CPF, with Rs.90 crores already approved, only 21 projects have been sanctioned under this scheme for the mission cities as on May 2009, with 14 more awaiting approval. Even in terms of the enactment of the community participation law, out of the 26 states scheduled to implement it by the fourth year, only 8 have implemented it.

• And finally, Reforms.
In theory, these reforms ensure that governments at each level have the requisite autonomy, resources and power to carry out the duties assigned to them. In addition, they ensure accountability and efficiency. But in practice, these reforms have progressed very slowly. A quick look at the graph below indicates these inefficiencies. For instance, up to year 4, while 18 states had committed to implementation of the 74th constitutional Amendment Act (transfer of 12th schedule functions from states to urban local bodies), 8 states are yet to fully implement the reform. Similarly, while 29 states had committed to enact the Public Disclosure Law, only 15 states had successfully implemented the reform.

Another key objective of the JNNURM is to introduce e-governance in the municipalities to provide single-window services to the citizens, to increase efficiency and productivity of the urban local bodies (ULBs), and to provide timely and reliable management information. However, only 13 of 45 cities had enacted the reform.

In the coming years, as the quantum of money allocated for JNNURM increases, the pressure on states and local bodies to deliver will continue to increase. A careful look at the existing inefficiencies is therefore a priority – if our cities are to reflect our growth.

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator of PAISA project at Accountability Initiative.

Effect of Soaring Food Prices on Mid Day Meal Scheme

2010-01-21T21:32:00.000-08:00

Sruti Bandyopadhyay

Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDM) is the world’s largest school-feeding programme aimed at promoting universalisation of elementary education by increasing enrolment, retention, attendance, and simultaneously impacting the nutritional status of students. It is learnt that besides rice and dal, MDM involves use of oil, vegetables, salt and spices and fuel. Keeping in view the rising cost of the commodities, effective from December 1, 2009, for primary schools the fund allocation norm for cooking costs has been increased to Rs. 2.50 per child per day(up from Rs. 1.58). For upper primary the allocation has been increased to Rs. 3.75 per child per day (up from Rs. 2.08).

However, the existing cost norms and the subsequent revision is based on overall inflation figures, not specifically on the costs of commodities used in the meals. Overall inflation statistics can hide the fluctuations in the prices of specific commodities relevant to the meal costs. The point becomes all the relevant as the country is now witnessing rising food prices despite negligible inflation. (Overall inflation is 7.31% in December)

Price rise of some essential food items (52-week period, in %)

Potatoes..................110.11
Vegetables................30.97
Pulses.................... ...42.21
Onions..................... 40.07
Milk..........................12.62
Cereals................... 13.91
Rice.........................12.91
Fruits.......................7.87

Source: (IANS), Week ended on December 26, 2009

The current procedure for revising the costing norms acts as a further roadblock to realistic pricing. Any revision needs to be approved by the EFC and the cabinet each time - after seeking comments from all relevant ministries - in a process that can take up to a year. By the time the cabinet approval is obtained, the revised norms become outdated and the exercise is redundant.

Instead, a mid-day meal pricing index which would consider fluctuations in the prices of five items essential to the scheme seems to be a better idea to tackle this soaring price inflation.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative

Pratham Launches its Annual Status of Education Report 2009

2010-01-20T21:14:00.000-08:00

Pratham's Annual State of Education Report (ASER) 2009 was launched last week. ASER is a path breaking effort at monitoring outcomes and pushing for accountability from government for monies spent. The report is based on a study of 575 rural districts in India and covered 16,291 villages, 338,027 households and 6,91,734 children. The annual survey found that while 96% of children in rural India in the age group of 6-14 years are now enrolled in school, the quality of education is still quite poor with just 69% of Class I students in rural areas being able to recognize numbers between 1 and 9. The report also points to the rise in private tuitions across the country. From 2007-2009, the percentage of children taking tuition classes in every class in government and private schools. To know more about the report and its findings click on the news links below:

The Times of India:"More children going to school: Pratham report"
The Times of India: "Only 38% of class V students in rural India can divide"
The Indian Express: "More students taking tuitions, says study"
The Economic Times:"Rural education remains poor"

Money for Nothing

2010-01-20T20:28:00.000-08:00

Yamini Aiyar and Anit Mukherjee

Elementary education policy in India is, as economist Lant Pritchett characterizes it, in a ‘Big Stuck’. Stuck because despite money being poured in to the system – funding for elementary education has had a five-fold increase since the launch of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) in 2001 - outcomes remain poor. As the Annual Survey of Education Report reminds us year after year, about half of India’s children in standard five cannot read a standard two level text book and far fewer can do basic mathematics. Getting out of this morass requires a system overhaul that creates a performance based, accountable delivery system.

How can this be achieved? A crucial step towards creating an accountable system is to ensure accountability in financing. With the imminent implementation of the Right to Education Act (RTE) which is set to significantly expand education finance –the RTE will cost the exchequer Rs. 43600 crores - ensuring accountability is critical.

First principles of public accountability require that expenditures must adequately reflect citizens’ interests and priorities. When it comes to basic services, citizens’ interests are best captured locally at the point where services are delivered. This means greater local autonomy and discretion, particularly in resource allocation.

The current system of education financing allows little room for autonomy. Schools have no discretion over funds that arrive tied to rigid norms determined by the center and states. These norms also determine the quantum of funds schools receive resulting in a mismatch between school needs and funds received. For example, a school with 1000 students receives just about two and a half times more money than a school that has 100 students. And if a school wants to spend more on teacher materials than painting walls – the norms simply won’t allow it.

Autonomy apart, accountability also requires transparency and predictability in fund flows. After all, you need to know how much money is due and when it willarrive in order to make plans and hold the system to account. This is one of SSA’s greatest weaknesses. Between October and December 2009, an army of 25,000 Indian citizens joined the Annual Survey of Education Report to ask over 12,000 schools how much money arrived, when it arrived and how much was spent. The survey found that by October – half way through the financial year - more than 50 percent of the schools surveyed reported not receiving SSA funds. These findings are also reflected in macro level data- 63 percent of SSA funds in 2008-09 were spent in the second half of the financial year.

Delays are due to many reasons – delays in releases from the state governments, delays in process as the funds travel through the different administrative layers. And often they are a result of administrative lethargy. Here’s an interesting story - in some schools in Sehore, Madhya Pradesh, funds had not reached till mid-November. The reason, the State government was converting to an electronic system so that funds could be transferred at the click of a button and delays avoided. A noble cause that took an inadvertent amount of time to implement because local banks had capacity for 4 digit electronic transfers and this particular transfer required 10 digits. No interim measures were put in place to ensure money reached while these kinks were being sorted out and the schools suffered.

Whatever the cause, delays proliferate because of the lack of transparency in the system. ASER data indicates that in many schools even the head master is not aware of the different grant components, when they should arrive and what they ought to be spent on. In the absence of information, schools, parents and children are disempowered as they lack the tools to make plans and demand accountability for delayed and unpredictable fund flows.

Resolving these problems and ensuring accountability in educational finance requires systemic reforms in the way educational delivery systems are designed. Crucially, the system will need to ensure genuine local autonomy. One way of doing this is to move away from ‘tied’, norm based funding to the provision of block grants calculated on the basis of the number of children enrolled and attending schools. Local autonomy must be accompanied with a process for collection and dissemination of real time information on fund flows and expenditures. This will ensure greater transparency and enable citizens to monitor processes and demand accountability.

Education policy in India today is at a crossroads. There is a clear consensus that improved education holds the key to India’s future and the passage of the RTE stands testimony to this. Now as bureaucrats take to their drawing boards to develop rules and guidelines for the implementation of the RTE, the focus must shift to getting the design right. Only then can we begin to unstuck the ‘Big Stuck’.

(Yamini Aiyar is with Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research. Anit Mukherjee is with National Institute of Public Finance Policy. Both institutes work in partnership with ASER to strengthen accountability in education finance through a project called PAISA)

Video Recordings of the Accountability Initiative consultation on Civil Society and Accountability, December 2-3, 2009

2010-01-15T03:28:00.000-08:00

Accountability Initiative held a consultation entitled Civil Society and Accountability on December 2nd and 3rd, 2009. The overall objective of the consultation was to debate the nature and effectiveness of civil society’s engagement with the state for accountability. In particular, it aimed to address the following key issues:

* Taking stock of existing experiments, understanding strengths and limitations

* Debating challenges of sustainability, institutionalization and effectiveness

* Identifying potential for replicability and scale

All of this was discussed in the context of whether and to what extent civil society’s engagement for accountability might contribute to strengthening substantive democracy in India.

The Consultation was attended by about 35 participants on each day. Participants included practitioners, policymakers and academics working on issues of accountability from around the country.

Some of the video recordings from the Consultation can be accessed below. More videos will be uploaded on our website soon.

Amitabh Behar, National Centre for Advocacy Studies

Shekhar Singh, National Campaign for People's Right to Information

Right to Information: Need for an Enforcement Strategy

2010-01-13T01:34:00.000-08:00

Alasdair Roberts

The right to information is only meaningful if the law is properly enforced. We know this from common sense. Government officials who dislike the law will be tempted to ignore it if they believe that there will not be any consequences. Citizens will not make requests if they do not believe there is a quick remedy against stubborn bureaucrats.

The findings of some recent evaluations of the Right to Information Act are therefore worrisome. The report completed by the RTI Assessment and Analysis Group finds that information commissions received 86,000 appeals in the first two and half years of the law's operation, but issued only 50,000 decisions. Inflow exceeds outflow, and the result is a growing inventory of cases within some commissions, and delays in handling individual investigations. The special committee that reported to the Fourth National Conference on RTI last October found a "huge pendency in disposal of appeals and complaints" in some places. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers study on RTIA said that rapid growth in number of appeals is "creating a grave situation which requires urgent intervention."

India is not the only country to have encountered this problem. For example, the UK information commissioner also struggled with a backlog of appeals after the adoption of the Freedom of Information Act in January 2005. The advocacy group Campaign for Freedom of Information reported in June 2009 that one-third of appeals sat in the commissioner's office for at least two years. The Campaign warns that these delays could threaten the law's effectiveness. Citizens may become frustrated, and officials may exploit the fact that they can "safely withhold information for several years before the Commissioner compels disclosure."Canada's information commissioner also acquired a backlog of appeals in the late 1990s. Government departments were cutting their budgets and taking information requests less seriously. The inflow of appeals to the information commissioner rose, and the time required to resolve cases grew longer. Requesters became restless, and commission staff became demoralized.

Backlogs can develop for several reasons. One is a simple shortage of resources for resolving appeals. Another is lack of experience in handling a large number of appeals. In addition, the first cases received after adoption of a law may require more attention because they set important precedents. However, there is also a difficulty that is built into the design of every right to information law. Every law assumes that the main way to assure compliance is by resolving individual complaints and appeals. But if a commission cannot resolve cases quickly, bureaucratic incentives to comply with the law become weaker, yielding even more complaints and appeals. Under the right set of circumstances, the weakness of the enforcement process could become self-reinforcing.

The challenge is to find ways of breaking out of this cycle. One approach is to streamline investigations so that they can be completed more quickly. For example, the new UK information commissioner recently told his staff that they do not need to achieve a "gold standard" in decisionmaking in every case. This may mean less detailed investigations, less consultation with parties, or decisions that are less carefully reasoned. This approach is defensible, within bounds, but may provoke resistance from citizens or bureaucrats who believe that their concerns have been given short shrift.

Another approach is to apply heavy legal sanctions for non-compliance -- so that officials are less tempted to take the "de facto time extension" that is provided because of backlogs within commissions. Of course, section 20 of the RTIA provides the authority to do this, even though commissioners have been reluctant to use the power, especially against lower-level staff. In the late 1990s, the Canadian commissioner's approach was to use his formal investigative powers to take evidence from senior officials who could be held accountable for "systemic" problems. This caught their attention, although many officials were upset by what they saw as heavy-handed tactics.

There is also a third approach: a deliberate effort to identify and deal with parts of government that generate a disproportionately large proportion of a commission's caseload. Rather than resolving a specific appeal, a commission can push a department to cooperate in a study of internal administrative practices that seem to produce a large number of appeals. Again, the RTIA gives commissioners unusual authority (in section 19(8)) to follow this path. But this sometimes requires a different skill set, with more emphasis on management policies and less on quasi-judicial resolution of cases.

Indian commissioners, like their counterparts around the world, must develop enforcement strategies to cope with two enduring realities: limited resources and an ambitious mandate. As we can see, there is no easy path: every tactic has potential benefits but also potential difficulties. Fortunately the RTIA gives ample opportunity for experimentation and learning. This is a critically important part of the RTI project. As Laura Neuman has recently observed in World Bank report, "if there is a widespread belief that the access to law will not be enforced, the right to information becomes meaningless."

Alasdair Roberts is a professor of law and public policy at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, USA. He is a specialist on access to information law. His web address is http://www.aroberts.us

RTI Briefs series

2010-01-07T21:35:00.001-08:00

The Accountability Initiative has recently launched a policy brief series on the right to information. The Right to Information Act (RTI Act) was passed in 2005. The RTI Briefs series examines issues relevant to the debate on right to information in India, highlighting international best practices with a view to inform policy debates.The first brief in this series looks at Section 4 or proactive disclosure of information under the RTI Act and highlights best practices in proactive disclosure of information from Mexico. For more on this brief, click here.

State Size, State Capacity and Decentralisation

2010-01-06T20:38:00.000-08:00

Mandakini Devasher Surie

The current political deadlock over the creation of Telangana and subsequent demands for new states has raised interesting questions about the relationship between state size and good governance. The big question is does size matter? Are smaller states better and more easily governed? In a recent article, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Former Minister for Panchayati Raj, argues that the question of whether small or big states are better governed is largely irrelevant and that “...both large and small states will continue to be badly governed until there is effective devolution of funds, functions and functionaries to local authorities” through decentralisation. In another article, Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues that “the success of a state depends on state capacity rather than state size” and that “state building” rather than state creation is of key importance. I think that these arguments are interlinked and need to be looked at more closely.

The issue of state capacity is crucial when we talk about the ability of states to govern effectively. State capacity is in part linked to how well states decentralise or devolve powers to lower levels of government. The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments have made provisions for the decentralisation of administrative and fiscal powers to rural and urban local bodies. In basic terms, decentralisation involves the assignment of responsibilities (functions) at each level of government, backed by sufficient resources (funds) and staff (functionaries) needed to carry out the duties assigned. The 3F’s are basically the backbone of any decentralised form of government and if implemented well can pave the way towards better service delivery and greater accountability in government.

In theory, these reforms ensure that governments at each level have the requisite resources to carry out the duties assigned to them. But in practice, decentralisation reforms have progressed slowly resulting in a gradual undermining of the state’s ability to govern effectively. A quick glance at the Devolution Index 2008-09 shows that decentralisation to rural local bodies or Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) has generally been uneven and incomplete across most States (see Figure 1)

Source: NCAER, 2009

When it comes to the 3Fs the Index reveals that:

Functions: Most states have not devolved all the 29 listed functions to PRIs. On average states have only devolved 21.3 out of the 29 functions. The activity mapping of functions has also been poor. Activity mapping involves breaking up activities into smaller units and assigning them to specific tiers within government. On average, States have carried out activity mapping for only 17.6 out of 29 functions

Funds: Finances have not followed the assignment of functions. PRIs lack the capacity to raise or collect internal revenues and taxes such that they are largely dependent on grants-in-aid from central and state governments;

Functionaries: PRIs lack adequate infrastructure and staff to carry out their duties. As PRIs are unable to hire or fire their own staff, they are reliant on state governments to provide them with functionaries. Inadequate and skeletal staff at local levels is a major hindrance to effective decentralisation.

Without the clear assignment of functions, sufficient funds and staff, PRIs have poorly defined and unfunded mandates. So even as we debate the creation of new states, existing states are still struggling to provide the right kind of capacity support and infrastructure to their local bodies. The whole objective of devolving power to Panchayati Raj Institutions was to activate and create a host of empowered local governing bodies that would determine local development objectives. Sadly, this is not happening as fast or as well as it should. A state is only as effective as its smallest administrative unit. Without effective decentralisation, the capacity of a state (however, big or small) is limited. Yet, we are in a situation today, where in most states, even the smallest units of government lack the basic capacity to implement let alone govern.

In the coming years, as the quantum of government expenditure on centrally sponsored schemes increases with programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and National Rural Health Mission, the pressure on states and local bodies to deliver will continue to increase. New states will face even greater challenges as they get their houses in order. States, old or new, need to get much faster and better at decentralising powers to local bodies. While the debate about small versus big states promises to rage on, I think we can all agree that size will make no difference in the absence of the fundamental instruments of decentralised governance and the basic institutional and human capacity to use these instruments effectively.

For more on the state of decentralisation in India today check out the Accountability Initiative’s Panchayat Briefs series. The first brief in this series examines the ability of decentralisation to promote inclusive governance. The second brief takes a broad look at the state of decentralisation in India.

Mandakini Devasher Surie is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.

The Right to Education Act: getting the design right for right implementation

2010-01-03T23:25:00.000-08:00

Yamini Aiyar

How do we deliver elementary education effectively and accountably to India’s children? This question is becoming increasingly more relevant as India begins work to implement the recently passed Right to Education Act (RTE). See here for an interesting review by Rukmini Banerji of James Tooley’s latest book, The Beautiful Tree. The book is an effort to address one critical question: “If public education is so dismal and time-consuming to reform to make it better for poor people...could private schools be a quicker, easier, more effective solution?” The review raises the issue of local ownership as holding the key to effective and accountable delivery. Can better decentralization improve education outcomes? And if so, what is the best design through which this should be done?

The RTE has many provisions for ensuring accountability through decentralization, including the creation of school management committees (SMC) empowered to make plans and monitor school-level expenditures. But as is well known in India, the devil lies in the implementation. How effectively these accountability provisions will work on the ground depends on getting the ‘right’ design that will ensure accountability and transparency in implementation process. How can this be achieved?

If there is one lesson to take home from India’s past experience, particularly with the implementation of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, it is that simply creating decentralized institutions such as the Village Education Committees (VEC) that ‘invite’ local participation in planning does not itself result in effective decentralized delivery – it is now widely accepted that VECs for the most part are defunct. Local institutions need to be nurtured and resourced. They need to be provided with information and capacity, and perhaps most importantly, the system needs to create incentives that make local participation meaningful. How do we ensure this in the RTE? Now as bureaucrats are at the drawing board developing the rules and guidelines for the implementation of the RTE, this issue needs to be seriously debated so that for once we get the ‘implementation design’ right.

Yamini Aiyar is Director of Accountability Initiative

Observations from the field: Sehore, Madhya Pradesh

2009-12-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

Peeyush Agarwal

As an intern at the Accountability Initiative one of my assignments was mapping, with the help of GPS technology, the public services at the six villages that were being covered under the PAISA project. These villages are located in the Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh, approximately 60 kms from Bhopal, the state capital, and have been chosen due in part to Madhya Pradeshs’ history with decentralisation (of public function) as well as language and accessibility.

Amirganj, Sehore, MP: View from the highest point

The objective of the visit to Sehore was the mapping of all public services delivered to these villages, and the development of new templates to relay data on the status of primary schools in these areas. The work that was done can be accessed from the Accountability Initiative website shortly.The following are a few notes on the observations I made during my trip to these villages.

The villages of Dhaba, Palaspani, Amajhir, Amirganj, Sirali and Bhilai are located in the Narsullaganj block in Sehore. The public services made available to them are provided by Central Government Schemes, the Village Panchayat or the Van Vibhag. Basic services include the provision of hand-pumps, wells, roads, work under NREGA, schooling and access to toilets built under the Total Sanitation Campaign. While large amounts of funds have been released for each of these, the success of some of these campaigns is questionable.

Van Vibagh - Forest Department Office, Sirali

Take for example, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) - the objective of which is to “to ensure sanitation facilities in rural areas with broader goal to eradicate the practice of open defecation.” One of the facilities to be built is the Individual Household Latrine where toilets are built for every Below Poverty Line (BPL) family. The government has released Rs 2200 per family while beneficiaries are to contribute Rs. 300 for the project. The project aims at building a basic low cost unit with a superstructure for these households. While most of these facilities have been cited as completed by the local worker at Dhaba and the sarpanch at Bhilai, none of these units have doors and most of the residents consider them to be unusable. The worker maintains that to provide doors additional funds of approximately Rs. 700 are needed. Though superstructures can be seen at most households the ultimate aim of providing villagers with sanitation facilities is not being met.

Schools in these villages are run admirably under the Sarva Shiksha Abhyan (SSA) but teachers have a gargantuan task of educating students who need special attention and handling their administrative work at the same time. Student attendance in some of these villages is very low while many students in Grades 6 and above have problem with elementary Math. This leads to a class where student needs vary greatly, and teachers cannot standardise their teaching assignments and finish school text-books within the academic year. More importantly, they fail to deliver quality education to children.

Rural connectivity has improved drastically under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) while work under the rural employment guarantee scheme is not very visible as most workers are engaged in agriculture during this period. The village of Palaspani is easily one of the most neglected villages in this area. With only one 100m road in the whole village and no connectivity to other villages, Palaspani is bereft of even proper sanitation and drinking water facilities. There are only two working handpumps located in one corner of the village.

Due to some of the many problems listed here, villagers are often disillusioned and disheartened. They understand that community involvement is necessary to improve the status of these villages but have little information on how to do so. Problems like not having proper knowledge on grievance redressal mechanisms irk them and render them helpless and, later, apathetic. The government is investing a lot in rural development but they also need to see the work through to the end. Better accountability measures need to be implemented as a means to achieve this end and village residents need to be provided with easier means to access information and redress grievances.

Satellite Dish on the house

Despite all these problems, a sight that strikes you immediately is the pervasive satellite dishes mounted over most households that provides villagers access to satellite television! It makes you wonder whether the provisioning of more basic services that need to be provided through the government will improve, or whether private players will find solutions in the near future. I do believe that villagers are more than ready to pay for these “better” facilities as shown by their propensity to subscribe to satellite TV. The important thing here is how we find means to provide them access to these.

Peeyush Agarwal is a student at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He interned at Accountability Initiative in December 2009.

On why we don’t govern ourselves better (Alternatively, are we just crap people?)

2009-12-14T23:24:00.000-08:00

Bala Posani

Why do some societies govern themselves better than others? While this is a key question that animates much debate in the political economy of development, in my everyday musings I have considered variants on the theme. And invariably, with the cynicism and frustration that often characterizes my own experience of living in India, I find myself looking for answers to the question “what would it take for Indians to govern themselves better?”

At an everyday level, take our traffic sense, for instance. Presumably a pet peeve of everyone that is reading this post now. And each one of us has probably at some point wondered why we behave the way we do on our roads? Why do we honk so savagely? Why is the right of way always “MINE”, and our roundabouts veritable Russian roulette? Why do we violate the rules with such impunity? And complain that the traffic policemen don’t do their jobs, and join in as accomplices anyway by bribing them when they try to fine us for our faults? Why do we chuckle and shrug all these questions off 5 seconds later? Why the casual tolerance of the ordeal that driving on our roads is?

But this is not a rant on our collective traffic sense – or even the lack of it.

One of our colleagues, who participated in the recent NREGA social audits in Rajasthan, recounted to us how spectacular the event was and how successful it was in uncovering large amounts of fraud. But there were also instances he recounted where the Sarpanches had co-opted some of the villagers and gave them wages for 40 days without needing them to work at all, and kept the remaining 60-days worth of wages, and declared those villagers as having worked the whole 100 days. In this web of co-option, everyone stood to gain – the workers got money for doing nothing (and presumably could use those 100 days to work some more elsewhere and earn further) – the Sarpanch got to keep the money that was never his. It is highly unlikely that a fraud such as this would come up in a social audit, as the co-opted villager has little incentive to speak against the Sarpanch because he himself is accomplice in the crime. The only room for suspicion is the asset that needs to be created at the end of the day as part of the NREGA – a well, a road etc. But with a bit of discretion and ingenuity, anybody can see that there is much scope for the Sarpanch to continue exploiting the goose, one golden egg at a time.

But this is not a post about social audits either.

There are dozens of other instances, ranging from the quotidian to the profound. What is it with our casual fly-tipping? Our defacing of our heritage monuments? Our men peeing on the roads with impunity? Our dismal sense of queuing? Our bakshish to the guy who comes to take the electricity and water meter readings? Our politics? Our almost inhuman acceptance of social discrimination as one’s lot? Our little and not-so-little everyday corruptions and collusions that give expression to our ‘mistaken view of the state as a vehicle for personal aggrandizement’?

Looking for an all-encompassing diagnosis of what ails us through all of these symptoms is a complex academic exercise. At some level of abstraction, theories that have tried to answer questions like why some societies govern themselves better than others, or why some countries develop while others remain trapped in low-growth high-poverty equilibria, have done related things. In the literature on these questions, the possible answers like Geography, Trade, Culture and Colonization, have been found either to be instrumental or to not stand rigorous analysis. The current status of the argument proposes institutions as an explanatory variable to account for differences between societies. Institutions defined simply as rules of the game - the norms of behaviour that structure how people in a society interact with each other. In our public lives, there are formal public institutions like the Constitution, the Law, the Civil Services and so forth, and then there are the everyday informal institutions – the norms and traditions that govern our interactions with one another. Our system of beliefs, our faith, and our caste system in practice being some examples. The theory says progressive institutions are those that create incentives in a way that maximizes the collective benefit for the society as a whole. Regressive ones are those that make it possible for a select few to exploit others.

While that is a plausible explanation, there is something to be said also about the reverse direction of the causality. That is, not only do institutions influence how a society works, but a society and its people – you and I - also influence how our institutions develop over time. Some institutions that suit the more powerful among us are kept that way even if they hurt most others. The caste system is one enduring example of a bad institution that continues to be with us in myriad ways. In other words, institutions – formal and informal - are not always a given. They are a living breathing animal, shaped and reshaped by its people, and by how they affect their incentives. So in a society where bad institutions give scope for economic, social and political discriminations, its people should also at some level be held culpable. Perhaps every society gets the institutions it deserves? This is not unlike saying that every society gets the politicians it deserves, or the journalism it deserves, and the criminals it deserves, perhaps even the traffic it deserves. “We must be crap people”, then, is arguably a fair diagnosis in itself of why we bribe and collude and discriminate and drive badly.

If that seems plausible, what can we do about it? Can we legislate against it? But then we have. And we always find ways to work around the laws and ‘outsmart’ the system. Can we legislate some more? Implement better? Enforce better? Perhaps. But is this merely about legislation? The government? Is this an instrumental matter for policy? Or do we need to dig deeper? Should we go into in the realm of ethics and morals where laws by themselves have limited impact? Go on a collective soul-searching mission? Why are we the way we are, and why can’t we all be better people? Perhaps.

But the point is, any approach to accountability (better governance) can only be partial unless it aims eventually to internalize accountable behaviour. As if it were a norm. And for such an approach it is perhaps not enough to look at accountability as making a rule, and making people follow it, “if not…”.

Perhaps what we also need is a discourse on accountability that invokes it positively – as a responsibility. A moral and ethical responsibility of each and every one of us, as much as it is a legal obligation. A duty as much as a right.

If this is idealism, perhaps we need a bit of idealism in our pragmatics?

Bala Posani is Senior Research Analyst at Accountability Initiative

Social Audits and why they matter?

2009-12-09T01:58:00.000-08:00

Yamini Aiyar

In a rather worrying turn of events, the Government of Rajasthan, which in September had unveiled a grand plan to set up a social audit cell to monitor the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in the state, called off a series of social audits that were being undertaken in 16 districts of the state in the last week of November. Newspaper reports (see here) seem to suggest that the state government succumbed to pressure from Sarpanches and Gram Sewaks who had rallied against these audits. This move is a serious blow to efforts to institutionalize social audits in the NREGA and internalize transparency and accountability in our administrative systems. But it also raises important questions. Why do social audits matter? Do they really prevent corruption? And what have they achieved?

Do social audits matter? And do they reduce corruption? There is little hard evidence available to empirically answer this question. What we do know from experiences both in Andhra – which is now the only state to have successfully institutionalized social audits in the country – and across the country where sporadic social audits have been conducted, is that stories of corruption are unearthed. Andhra in its early days of social auditing reported a ‘recovery’ of Rs. 60 lakhs of embezzled funds. This money was physically handed over to NREGA beneficiaries at public meetings that followed the social audits. More recent unconfirmed figures seem to suggest that over 28 crores worth of corruption has been unearthed by the social audits of which about 4 crores has been ‘returned’ (to use social audit lingo). But what happens after? Has this uncovering of corruption and public naming and shaming that follows acted as a disincentive for corruption? The answer isn’t clear. Professor James Manor, a well known political scientist, whose been studying the NREGA in Madhya Pradesh argues that the transparency mechanisms in NREGA, of which social audits are one important element, have made it harder to steal from NREGA than from nearly any other government program. This fact was reiterated to me by a rather ‘honest’ Sarpanch on a recent trip to Madhya Pradesh who said he disliked NREGA precisely because it was difficult to steal from it! But at the same time there are studies that suggest otherwise - and this applies to Andhra as well.

But social audits do much more than reduce corruption. My first encounter with social audits was in 2006 in Andhra Pradesh when curiosity led to me to spend a couple of days with a social audit team. At the end of the two-day audit, a public hearing was organized where the teams and villagers shared their findings and evidence with the government. At least 200 people came to the meeting. The conversation was animated. Many villagers grabbed the mike to register their complaints, some were even shouting at the dais. On the dais were the Program Officer, the Post Officer and other sundry government officials. I don’t speak Telugu and had no idea of what was actually going on but for me this was extraordinary. Most villagers rarely get to see a government officer let alone talk to one (or in this case shout at one). At one point, and after much shouting and commotion, one of the field assistants (the worksite managers in NREGA) who had apparently embezzled some wages was openly fired by the Program Officer. Never before (and never after) had I – let alone the villagers- seen any arm of the Indian government act with such speed! For me this was a fine example of a responsive, accountable government.

A few months later, a former colleague and I undertook to study the effects of these audits and public meetings. The results (for details see link) tell an important story. More than 80 percent of those interviewed said they felt that social audits were a powerful tool to resolve grievances and problems with the government. But more important, almost 90 percent of the beneficiaries said that they felt more powerful and able to influence government officials after social audits. So social audits matter, and not just because they might reduce corruption, but because they can be empowering - they allow the poorest the opportunity to interact and speak to government officials and be heard.

But of course there are larger questions. At a recent social audit in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, while helping with logistics for 2,000 people to go out and conduct the audits, I found my self wondering if this is what it ought to take to make sure that the poorest guy gets his wages? It is hard work and a constant battle… and, really, are we resolving the fundamental, systemic issues that cause corruption in the first place? Perhaps not. But social audits give people information, they induce transparency – people finally get a peek into ‘the government’, they create platforms where people can engage with government and through all this they can (and arguably do) empower people to exercise their rights and that’s why they must be promoted not in one village or one state but all across the country. After all, only an empowered citizenry can demand accountability from the state.

A few years ago I wrote an article arguing that NREGA is not just about guaranteeing employment but also good governance. I had travelled around the country and was struck by the fact that transparency and accountability measures built into the Act have acted as a catalyst for state governments to innovate with measures for accountability. I went to Jharkhand, Andhra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu to participate in social audits. And it was not just social audits. The techies began experimenting with biometric identification, bank accounts were opened for beneficiaries – men and women - the list was endless. It seemed then that the NREGA could kick-start at least the beginnings of a revolution in governance. By preventing social audits and changing its mind on the institutionalization process, the government of Rajasthan has set a very dangerous precedent – one that doesn’t bode well for the potential of the NREGA and for the future of governance in India.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director of the Accountability Initiative.

Scaling Up Social Accountability: Accountability Scorecard

2009-11-30T21:46:00.000-08:00

Sruti Bandyopadhyay

Strengthening accountability relationships between policy makers, service providers and citizens is at the core of the public accountability effort. After many years of practice, piloting and trial and error, efforts are now increasingly focused on how to scale-up and mainstream these interventions. To address this, I'm proposing a new tool called Accountability Scorecard. An “Accountability Scorecard” would identify and provide information about the factors that determine the long-term success of a Centrally Sponsored/Central Sector Scheme. The score card can be used as a checklist while drafting a new scheme or can be used as a performance measurement tool for already existing schemes.

My initial thoughts are that it should include five elements namely-

1. Strategic Planning,
2. Expenditure Management, Financial Controls and Reporting-Implementation
3. Accountability to Oversight Bodies
4. Monitoring of Service Delivery
5. Handling of Misconduct, Corruption and Maladministration.

Sample questions might include:

* Has adequate/accurate data been collected about the sector and presented in the plan document?
* Does the plan nominate a responsible official for all the activities?
* Does the scheme have a clear guideline for state govt. and autonomous agencies to release a minimum grant amount every month?
* Is there list of districts for which the budget data not available?
* Is the reason for the non availability of the data is also specified?
* Is there a specific set of officers who can be held responsible if the minimum monthly grant does not reach the primary delivery unit (e.g.-schools/panchayat) ?
* Are there mechanisms for dispute resolution without going through the courts?
* Have the state governments’ views been solicited?
* Is the performance management scheme for the bureaucrats linked to the service delivery outputs of the Department?
* What kind of incentive structure is there to compliance with timely delivery of the output?
* Did the Department report adequately on cases of misconduct and corruption in its Annual Report to the Legislature?

And so on...

To start with there would be 50 questions in a score card. Each of which have a "yes/no" answer and each of which should be backed by a more detailed definition to make clear whether the answer is yes or no. A consolidated score can be generated on the basis of this.

Unlike a Community Score Card, here feedback won’t be sought from the local level community. For an example, if a civil society/Research organization wants to develop a scorecard for National Rural Health Mission, then it would invite a panel and the panel should consist of: State Facilitators for National Rural Health Mission, Accountant in the State Department , who is working on NRHM, Representative of a local NGO working on NRHM in the state, NRHM official from Delhi, Representative of an International NGO/organization who has worked on same scheme in different country, Academician. The panel would give their individual scores on each of these 50 questions and thus a scheme can be categorized either as a Non-compliance scheme, or as an Extremely Poor Compliance or a Full Compliance scheme.

For anyone interested in thinking seriously about how to scale-up social accountability efforts, I believe this can be a good beginning of a necessary conversation.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative

Social Audits: Field Notes from Warangal

2009-11-24T00:33:00.000-08:00

Diane L Coffey

Earlier this month, a group of eight students from Princeton University travelled with our professor, Dr. Jeffrey Hammer, from Princeton, New Jersey, USA to Duddungi block in the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh, India.

The purpose of our trip was to learn about the social audit process that has been instituted in AP to monitor the implementation of NREGA, the national employment guarantee act. According to the 2005 act, each rural Indian household should be provided with 100 days manual labour per year. A unique feature of the act is that work should be provided on demand. There are other salient features of the act as well, which distinguish it from previous government employment programs. NREGA workers are supposed to be paid the state minimum wage, in cash, within 15 days of completion of a job. The national NREGA guidelines stipulate that social audit audits should be used to monitor NREGA implementation. As yet, however, only AP has done social auditing on a wide scale.

Before travelling to Warangal, a rural district about 5 hours east of Hyderabad, we met with Ms. Sowmya, one of the main coordinators of AP’s social audits. Ms. Sowmya, an activist originally based in Rajasthan with the NGO MKSS, told us about the social audit team and the social audit process. She described a process whereby literate young men (and sometimes women) are recruited from families who have worked on NREGA projects and trained to scrutinize muster rolls and other documents pertaining to NREGA work. These “village social auditors” then worksites and workers’ homes crosschecking the documents, which are obtained using India’s new Right to Information Act. The auditors make notes about discrepancies in payments and measurements, and inform workers about their rights under the act.

The culmination of the social audit process is the social audit forum, an occasion for the social audit team and for villagers who choose to attend to share the findings of the social audit. We Princeton students had the fortunate opportunity to attend a social audit forum while we were in Duddungi. The forum was held outside the block development office. Preparations for the social audit forum began in the morning, with the raising of a large tent, and the assembly of tables and chairs for the attendees. People arrived throughout the morning, and the program got underway around 11am. The employees of the BDO, the district level program officer, members from many levels of the social team, field assistants and technical assistants, villagers, and curious neighbors attended the forum. There was even a police presence; we were told that the last social audit forum in Duddungi had been tense, so this time, extra precautions were taken.

To begin, a member of the social audit team sang a song about the NREGA. After that, different district level resource persons read out complaints from the notes they had prepared about the social audit. The district level program officer moderated the discussion and the block level program assistant took notes. The complaints involved issues of worksite mismeasurement, overreporting of the number of workers, and discrepancies between days worked and wages paid. Some villagers waited several hours for their complaints to be discussed. One woman said that she was waiting to talk to the officials about compensation for an injury that her husband had sustained on an NREGA worksite.

By 5 o’clock, it was beginning to get dark, but the forum was still in full swing. We decided that it was time for us to head back to Hyderabad. As we piled in the cars, we were left with several questions: How will the issues raised at the forum be dealt with? What will happen to the people who spoke out at the forum? Will the implementation of the NREGA be affected by this process? We hope that our analysis of a dataset collected by the Accountability Initiative in 2007 and 2008 about social audits and the NREGA in Andhra Pradesh will help shed light on the answers some of our questions.

We are grateful to the Accountability Initiative and to the Ministry of Rural Development in Andhra Pradesh for arranging this unique opportunity for us to learn more about government accountability and to see a social audit forum in person.

Diane is a student at Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Right to Information: File Notings In, Amendments Out!

2009-11-19T03:46:00.000-08:00

Mandakini Devasher Surie

US Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis famously said “sunshine is the best disinfectant”. Right to Information laws or “sunshine” laws, by opening up government decision-making to public scrutiny, bring a much needed dose of sunshine to the otherwise opaque dealings of governments. The last decade has seen an explosion of information laws around the world as governments and civil society recognise the value of providing citizens with access to information. Today there are some 90 countries with laws and regulations that provide citizens with a legal right to access information and records held by government departments. Closer home, the Indian Right to Information Act (RTI Act) of 2005 recently celebrated its 4th birthday. Since its enactment, the RTI Act has been used by a range of people including activists, civil servants, NGOs, lawyers, doctors, students and ordinary citizens. According to a recent study conducted by RAAG (Right to Information Analysis and Assessment Group), in the first two and a half years of the RTI Act, 1.6 million applications were filed in urban areas and an estimated 400,000 applicants from villages made requests for information. Overall, RAAG estimates that in the first 3 years of the RTI Act some 2 million RTIs were filed across the country. This number alone speaks about the value of the law in providing citizens with an avenue to approach and seek answers from governments.

Despite the wide usage of the law there are currently efforts within government to amend the law to exclude key provisions from public access. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal agency responsible for implementing the Act, has recently confirmed that the government is considering amending the law to exempt “file notings” and “frivolous and vexatious” requests for information. File notings are essentially the opinions and notes of civil servants on government files that sum up the decisions taken on a particular matter. You don’t have to think too hard about why bureaucrats do not want you or me to have access to these! As for “frivolous and vexatious” requests, it is really anybody’s guess what such requests may be. Presumably, if I want to know how much money the Municipal Corporation of Delhi spent last year on repairing roads– it may be considered vexatious by the Public Information Officer who has to gather the information but it would certainly not be frivolous.

The key question is who gets to decide what is or is not frivolous or vexatious? In the UK, government departments get a fair number of the so called ‘frivolous’ requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In 2006, the Hampshire Police received a request from “ilikemeninuniform” seeking information on the "eligible bachelors within Hampshire constabulary between the ages of 35 and 49 and details of their email addresses, salary, and pension values". Taking the request in their stride - and with a big pinch of salt - the office replied that they did in fact have 210 eligible bachelors on the rolls but sadly could not give out their personal information! In another case the Ministry of Defence got a request from an ex-sailor wanting to track down "an old Royal Navy recipe for sauteed kidneys and curried meatballs"! There are undoubtedly similar requests in India (which sadly we do not get to hear about) and I imagine they can be annoying but do we really need to amend the Act to deal with them?

These are some of the concerns that were voiced at a dharna organised last weekend in the capital by the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI). In a strong letter to the Prime Minister, activists have affirmed that the “... amendments are not to strengthen the law or improve its implementation. On the contrary...the proposed amendments, if introduced, will emasculate the RTI Act....". “An amendment in the Act would be an obviously retrograde step, at a time when there is a popular consensus to strengthen it through rules and better implementation and not introduce any amendments.” The Department of Personnel and Training has recently said that it will follow a process of public consultation before any amendments are passed. But the question remains as to why these amendments are even necessary? Amendments per se are not bad - if carefully considered and well drafted, amendments can in certain cases improve the implementation of laws, rules and regulations. But amendments designed to fundamentally water down the essence of one of the strongest information laws in the world is simply retrograde. The government would do better to take on board the findings of the recent RAAG study which shows that more than file notings and vexatious requests – weak implementation, lack of training and capacity building and poor records management are the major constraint faced by the governments today.

Amendments to the RTI Act have been on the government’s agenda for quite some time. As early as 2006, civil society groups and leading RTI activists rallied against government attempts to amend the law. Round one went to civil society and to the RTI Act, as the “Save the Right to Information Campaign” caught the attention of the media and successfully stalled the Union Government from pushing through the amendments. The outcome of round two still hangs in the balance. But surely, we can all agree that what we really need is more sunshine not more darkness.

Mandakini Devasher Surie is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.

AI's New Working Paper - 'Enhancing Accountability in Public Service Delivery Through Social Audits: A Case Study of Andhra Pradesh, India'

2009-11-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

Accountability Initiative's new working paper examines the effectiveness of social audit as a tool to enhance accountability.

Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, Ritesh Singh and Vinay Vutukuru measure the impact of social audits on the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the flagship employment guarantee program of of India, in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

The main research questions addressed are: what is the impact of social audits on the size of the program and the payment process? Are social audit results a good indicator of the overall quality of program implementation? How does the performance of Karnataka, a neighbouring state, which has not taken up social audit, compare to that of Andhra Pradesh in the overall implementation of the program? And what are the reasons behind the successful scale up of social audits in Andhra Pradesh?

The results show that there is a statistically significant improvement in the size of the program as measured by the mandays generated. There was no statistically significant improvement in the proportion of timely payments, which can be attributed to technical problems in scaling up the payment process. It was found that the qualitative reports provided useful inputs on the process related aspects (performance of functionaries, maintenance of muster rolls etc) that were missing from the quantitative performance reports. It was found that the program is not in a very stable position in Karnataka, given the fact that there has been a decrease in the size of the program in the current year, and a comparison with Andhra Pradesh would not be a fair. An important insight was that the social audit program generated a great deal of public support in Andhra Pradesh, as manifested by the huge turnouts in the sub-district level meetings, which resulted in political support cutting across party lines. Another critical strategy was co-opting the lower bureaucracy in the entire process, so that there were no major problems during roll-out.

The overall conclusion is that social audits are indeed an important tool in building social awareness which results in a greater demand for work which translates into increased size of the program. The process also exposed corruption in the implementation of the program and a total amount of Rs 20 million of program funds was recovered.

The paper recommends that the Andhra Pradesh experiment with social audit can be replicated elsewhere in the country, provided that the learnings from its example are internalized, the program is launched in an incremental manner, and political issues generated by the process are carefully handled. It is specifically recommended that the Government of India should finance a pilot social audit project in two districts in each state of the country, roughly modeled on the Andhra Pradesh example. The states could then do a comprehensive roll out across all districts based on the state-specific learning from the pilot projects.

The paper can be downloaded by clicking here.

Dissent Economics: Thoughts on an inclusive future

2009-11-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

Hindol Sengupta

Accept it. Deep down, perhaps even precariously near the surface, in your heart you love the fact that being well-off is slowly returning to vogue. You heap scorn at the fashion weeks (no, you couldn't have missed them because India had four, or maybe five this year) but you are enormously glad that someone, somewhere had enough money in India to celebrate leggy models and largely unwearable clothes so many times.

Chances are you love the fact that the downturn is coming to an end - unless you belong to India's Communist parties and were trashed in the polls - and are delighted to know that you will not lose your job after all.

But, as Jeffery Sachs says, most likely the lessons of the downturn are fast being forgotten and no matter which way you read the alphabet soup of recovery ('L', maybe 'V', why not 'W'?), there is little doubt that bubbles are forming once again even as the first champagne bottles, in a year and a half in some cases, are being uncorked.

So what lessons are being forgotten post the downturn?

In July, in a special issue, The Economist pointed out that how the bubble burst is fundamentally altering economic theory, arguing that macroeconomists, especially central bankers, "were too fixated on taming inflation and too cavalier about asset bubbles".

Now, as the US economy reports growth for the first time in about a year, officially, as some newspapers have reported, ending the "longest since World War II" recession, the question to ask is what forms asset bubbles, why are they ignored and is it possible, somewhere, even at this moment, more asset bubbles are forming but there is little chance that we will know what they are until they burst spectacularly?

The downturn has brought several theories of melting pedestals of finance and macroeconomics and rethinking, more dramatically, the basis of neo-liberal capitalism. The question - many have asked - is, is capitalism now on an irretrievable collision course with the greater common good and has it now been irretrievably proved that left to itself, un-shepherded capitalism is apocalyptic?

The answer of course is yes, and yes.

In our terror-ridden world, economic and political apocalypse is, assuredly, intertwined.

If you peer closely at the debate that surrounds analysis of Wall Street greed to Maoist violence in India's infamous Red Corridor, from terror recruits in dysfunctional, and one is being kind here, North Africa, to the new great game for oil, friction and finance are constant bedfellows.

Look closely at what India's considers the biggest threat to the nation state these days - Maoist violence. With an estimated one-third of the country controlled continuously or intermittently by Maoists and ever increasing instances of violence, including the heavily politicised train-jacking, there is reason for real concern.

But at the heart of the battle is a deep service delivery failure. Decades of poor delivery of resources and opportunities in India's large tribal swathes have turned them into a battlefield where argument for a different, inclusive model of development have reached bullet-point.

For evidence, listen to the latest statements of Kishenji, the ever-elusive but omnipresent Maoist chief, always shot with his back to the camera and a gun strategically slung on the shoulders (so that the gun faces the camera even if he does not) who has challenged the West Bengal government to finish development faster than the Maoists.

Among the Maoist brag: they would sink 100 tube-wells in the next month and also set up 15 temporary hospitals. All this barely 200 kilometers from Calcutta.

Rebels are doing what the government has not in 60 years.

In Peshawar, widely known as Pakistan's (Asia's?) Wild West, Pakistani diplomats have often told me why there is so much support for the Taliban. They bring security and a sense of the fair rule of law which the corrupt administration has always failed to deliver.

So while asset bubbles are created in one part of the world, another breeds violence devoid of basic guarantees of the nation state and the two are in constant path of collision.

There is a big common ground between conservative politics and neo-liberal economics - an almost fascist disdain for dissenting views. In India, this has meant that as the country squeezes 20 years of Western growth in two or three years, there is little space of questioning this development model.

In this arrogance of development, dissent is not merely derided, it is treachery.

The big lesson of the post-downturn debate is whether in the world of Maoist violence and terror attacks, in a world of the debris of once-great banks, can there be space for Dissent Economics?

In his prophetic essay 'The Future of Dissent' on the 'Futures' edition of India's leading thought journal Seminar in December 1997, historian Ashis Nandy wrote:

"It is the responsibility of the citizen-futurist... to defy and subvert the 'inevitable' in the future, only another name for a tomorrow which dare not be anything other than a linear projection of yesterday. Students of the future owe it to themselves to create a gap between those whose idea of the future is modelled on the Wall Street share market or on nineteenth century Europe and those ideas of the future that could be called contemporary versions or reincarnations of the prophetic."

As Wall Street alchemists now know, the future might often not be the linear projection of the histories of the past.

Through the idea of Dissent Economics, I want to argue that our collective future can be far better prophesied if space is made for dissent. Dissent Economics, formalised as part of mainstream debate, will ease radical pressures on the system and would aid cooperative negotiation that are more effective in bringing change.

How can Dissent Economic Theory be statistically integrated to mainstream analysis?

The beginning must be far away from the data charts, on the field, by allowing and indeed enabling processes bring together dissenting viewpoints into mainstream debate. Provisions such as these already exist in government programs in education, health, employment guarantee schemes etc, but need to be implemented better.

Dissent Economics seeks to understand and extract from what initially might seem to be fringe criticism of popular notions but through micro-analysis is able to extract clues and forecast scenarios that takes a more holistic picture of the future, not so much as a linear projection of the past, but the sum of total of collective experience and opinions where even a breakaway radical critique centre might be explosive enough to derail the 'inevitable'.

Dissent Economics at its core of course is about democracy.

Hindol Sengupta is Associate Editor, Bloomberg UTV

Show Me the Money – The trials and tribulations of finding budgetary data in India

2009-11-06T02:35:00.000-08:00

Avani Kapur

Every year on budget day, millions across the country tune into their television or radio-sets to hear the verdict of the budget. We want to know how much money has been allocated for various schemes and how the government has been fairing on its promises during the previous years. Yet, apart from that one day where basic budgetary data is clearly spelt out for us in a language everyone can understand, for the most part, anyone who has tried getting budgetary data on the social sector knows the arduous task it entails. A quick look at the Ministry of Health Website gives a clear indication of this!

As part of my work at the Accountability Initiative, I have been involved in trying to collect and disseminate information on social sector expenditures (see here). The importance of understanding social sector budgetary data becomes relevant by the quantum of money that it involves. The fact that the Indian economy has been growing at an incredible rate is a well-known fact. And this has been accompanied with large increases in social sector spending. According to the Economic Survey of India, Rs. 2,39,340 crores was spent in 2006-07 (the latest year for which actual expenditure figures are available) on Social Services including health and education. But how much of this actually reaches the service provider?

For the most part, tracking expenditure through budget documents requires an understanding of the expenditure responsibilities within and across Central and State governments. Budgets usually involve codes and although since 1987 budget codes have been harmonized, the process and documentation of budget-making has not kept pace with the changes over the last two decades.

Broadly there are 4 places to look for budgetary data, but each comes with its own set of limitations. One of the first places to look for budget documents is the Central Government’s dedicated budget website- www.indiabudget.nic.in. However, while the detailed demand for grants provides the Revised Estimates (RE) and Budget Estimates (BE), the final accounted expenditure is not available. Second, there is the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which gives information about the amount of money allocated under different sectors and states, but here too, there is no detailed information on how, and on what, the money is being spent.

In order to get details about expenditure one needs to go to a separate document called the ‘Finance Accounts’, which is not easily available online. Moreover, there is a 2 year lag in reporting, i.e. for 2008-09 financial year, actual expenditure is available only up to 2006-07.

Similarly, while budget documents of the State governments and relevant government ministries do provide actual expenditure, they are not always publically available online and even when they are, they are not easy to navigate as there is no standardization in the presentation of budget documents across states or departments along with the time-lag problem already mentioned.

Apart from the difficulty in finding information, even if the information is available, there are problems of different reporting styles, lack of reliable and up-to-date information.

To take the example of education, while the RBI reports it under the budget head of ‘’Education, Sports, Art and Culture’’, the Central Government budget website puts education under the head of General, Elementary, Secondary and Adult Education. This makes it difficult to know which is the right source and the data naturally doesn’t match, making cross-verification difficult.

Moreover, for social sectors such as education, there may be multiple departments delivering the service. For example, in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, schools in tribal-dominated blocks come under the domain of the Tribal Welfare Department. This means that the total expenditure for education is generally higher than the expenditure incurred by the Department of Education.

The problem is further intensified in cases where fiscal responsibility is devolved to the lower levels of government. Significant portion of grants coming from the Centre go directly to the panchayats through the State budget. While the State budget documents mention the quantum of block grants to panchayats made by various departments, they often do not mention the purpose of the grants. Moreover, the lack of documentation by the Panchayats along the lines of a national system of accounts makes reconciling the grants coming from the Centre and the State, with panchayat records, virtually impossible.

The lack of regular and reliable data is evident from the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Web Portal wherein, till date, expenditure under the various heads is only available up till January 2009. There is also no way of knowing when the website would be updated .

In the absence of a centralised information database tracking, the allocation and expenditure of funds (even for the government) becomes an extremely tedious exercise, having implications for planning as well as efficiency. The (often) big difference in revised estimates and budget estimates indicates that there are problems in the planning process, often caused by the inability to incorporate the spillovers of unspent funds. According to estimates, more than Rs.50,000 crores that were committed to flagship programs such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Health Mission etc, in previous years, are lying unutilized.

A centralised information system would assist in mitigating this problem by catching mistakes and inefficiencies and also ensuring transparency.

With the advent of the Right to Information Act (RTI), we now have a legal duty to provide information including budgetary information. Section 4(2) of the RTI, calls for the proactive disclosure of information of public authorities and mandates, “it shall be the constant endeavour of every public authority….. to provide as much information suo moto to the public at regular intervals through various means of communication including the internet, so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this act to obtain information”. Websites such as the Andhra Pradesh Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (APREGS) website, with its well-organised and up-to-date information for various heads right up to the mandal level indicate that creating such a system is possible. Now it is time we step up to the challenge!

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator of PAISA project at Accountability Initiative

Thoughts on Types of Accountability

2009-11-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

Nirvikar Singh

In the context of governance, accountability means that members and agents of government, i.e., politicians, employees and contractors are ultimately answerable to the citizens who provide the funds for their functioning, through taxes, fees and loans. Therefore, persistently poor public expenditure quality and inefficient delivery of public services, beyond what can be attributed to unavoidable constraints placed by financial and human resource limitations, must be traceable to weak accountability mechanisms operating for individuals (politicians and government employees) and for organizations (ministries and various public sector enterprises). Weak accountability also is central to the problem of corruption, which contributes to poor quality of public services.

Accountability is implemented through the provision of appropriate incentives for performance. For most of government, incentives and accountability are quite indirect, operating through organizational hierarchies. Only politicians are directly answerable to citizens through elections, and these are based on aggregate and incomplete assessments by citizens of politicians’ performance. Day-to-day accountability of politicians works through mechanisms such as the answerability of the executive to the legislature, the oversight of the judiciary, and general checks and balances within government. A federal structure adds the electoral dimension of accountability to subnational governments, but this can complicate the task of citizens in trying to assess performance.

To elucidate, one can categorize two fundamental types of accountability in governance: (1) that of elected officials to citizens and (2) that of other government employees to elected officials. The first can also be termed accountability through “voice”, political accountability or external accountability. Voice typically works through the electoral process, but one can also view direct appeals to the judiciary as a form of voice. In India, the broad use of public interest legislation can be seen as citizens’ using the judiciary to improve accountability of politicians, where electoral accountability is weak. An additional mechanism that provides external accountability is what Hirschman termed “exit.” Citizens may exit in two ways, either by shifting jurisdictions, or by going to the private sector for fulfilling wants that the government fails to provide adequately or effectively. In either case, the key enabler of exit is competition, between jurisdictions or between public and private provision.

The second type of accountability is more complex, since there can be vertical and horizontal chains of accountability within government as a whole, and within specific parts of government. Thus, this type of accountability includes “hierarchy” as a mechanism as well as checks and balances within government. One can also term this as “internal” accountability, broadening the standard usage of that term, which focuses on internal hierarchies, to include checks and balances.

Checks and balances are ignored in analysis that treats government as a dichotomous entity of elected and non-elected officials and neglects the broader dimensions of within-government accountability. For an example, consider the functioning of the Indian national parliament as an institution of accountability for the executive – its role in practice is weak, though it is supposed to have this function.

In considering forms of accountability, public interest legislation can also be interpreted as a hybrid of external (government-citizen) and internal accountability. One can possibly also distinguish “social” accountability, referring to the accountability of front-line service delivery units of government to clients. It seems that this is really a derivative of joint political and internal accountability. Yet another aspect of accountability is a division along quasi-functional lines: political, fiscal and administrative. Again, it seems that fiscal accountability, while very significant, is a joint product of political (external) and administrative (internal) accountability.

Nirvikar Singh is Professor of Economics at University of California, Santa Cruz.